JEDDAH, 28 December 2004 — The Investigation and Control Commission has again instructed all ministries and government agencies that they should monitor janitors while they are at work.
According to Al-Watan daily, this move comes after various government and public sectors have reported missing official documents. Additionally, there have been reports of leaks of classified information and high-level decisions.
“On several accounts I’ve made decisions about employee transfers and I’d leave the office with the papers,” said a Ministry of Health department manager.
“A day or two later I get the employee in question coming to me either protesting or thanking me for the transfer request that hasn’t even left my desk or been submitted,” he said.
“Just last week my superior got angry at me and accused me of negligence,” said Abu Faisal, an assistant in a governmental office. “He had to rewrite an important official document because I supposedly misplaced it twice. But that’s impossible. I’m very careful about these things.”
A former government employee who chose to call himself Saad Ahmad told Arab News: “I got fired because I was accused of carelessly handling highly confidential documents.”
He continued, “I was wrongly and unjustly accused. The only other person who had been around the papers was the office janitor. I’m sure someone put him up to it.”
These trespasses result in delaying the document processing as well as the implementation of decisions. In his letter addressed to all ministries, Director of the Investigation and Control Commission Mohammad Abdullah Al-Nafea categorically stated that janitors must not be allowed to enter government offices unless under authoritative observation or during official working hours.
He also emphasized that offices and desks should not be left accessible and unattended while being cleaned. He regretted that several government offices are not abiding by these instructions.
“Many leave the office keys with the janitor so that he could clean before or after working hours, and this is wrong,” said an official source from the Investigation and Control Commission.
He added: “These instructions were addressed and given around two years ago following a decision from the Council of Ministers. It’s part of an observation or monitoring program. Unfortunately, because only a minority of employees followed the official instructions, the damage has increased with more complaints of misdeeds.”
Al-Nafea demanded that security should be increased for jobs ranging from observing the janitors on the job to opening or closing administration offices and main gates of government buildings.
