Despite government attention, there are still many unsolved problems in our society. There is of course the poverty problem. We in the newspaper business receive hundreds of letters every day from poor people needing help.
There are difficulties apparently in receiving help from charitable institutions and in fact, I still am not sure what our own poverty fund has done for the poor.
Another problem is related to health and the overcrowding in government hospitals. The situation is so serious that many sick people are refused admission because of lack of beds. Patients are thus forced to turn to private hospitals, which are expensive and perhaps beyond their means. Those hospitals, as we know, will not accept patients for treatment unless payment is a certainty.
There are also medical cases which could be treated in government hospitals but which, because of long and time-consuming bureaucratic procedures, never make it to the consulting rooms.
There are the well-known problems in education — rented buildings and the low standard of facilities in many of our schools.
We have all heard of the many traffic accidents that kill women teachers as they are being transported to work in remote areas. There are far too few Saudi teachers in private schools and the Saudi women who are there are shamelessly mistreated.
These are not all of our problems but they are some of the most urgent; none of them are new and they are all waiting for solutions.
