DAMMAM, 12 December 2006 — Essa Al-Ajwad and Fahd Al-Ghanim are two young Saudis that have found a profitable niche in people’s impatience for waiting in lines to deal with the renewing passports or work/residency visas, paying municipal fines, or other mundane time consumers.

The two men in their 20s in the Eastern Province have developed a system by which, for a modest fee, they will do the administrative work of getting to the teller’s window.

They often can be seen hovering near a regional Passport Department office, wooing customers that are entering the building.

According to a recent report in Asharq Al-Awsat, Al-Ajwad said that this job provides him with more money than any other job he could get.

“I earn between SR150 and SR200 at this job every business day,” he said. “I am happy with this job now and have been doing this for more than two years.”

The men say that have about SR3,000 in a bank account that they use to process their customers’ administrative fees.

That way, all they need to do is pay the charge and the job gets done without any further transactions between the men and their clients.

“Sometimes we have so many customers wanting our service that we don’t have enough of a reserve in the bank to cover all of their expenses,” said Al-Ajwad.

“This is especially true in the summer when everyone seems to need a passport renewal to leave for vacation.”

Al-Ghanim says that loyal customers get a discount, usually SR10. New customers pay on average about SR40 for the service. The pricing depends on the size of the transaction that needs to be facilitated. “I take SR20 for every SR300, SR30 for SR600 and SR40 for SR1,000,” said Al-Ghanim, adding that most of his customers are Saudis who do not like to waste their time standing in queues.

“Many people tried to cheat us,” said Al-Ajwad. “Sometimes we pay for the customer before we get paid in order to develop trust. Some people take advantage of this. If this happens we try to stop the processing of the paperwork by informing the Passport Department about what happened. But that doesn’t always work.”

Despite these setbacks from uncooperative customers, the two men said what they fear most is that the government and the people will turn to the Internet, or to ATM-style payment kiosks, and forego the entire line-waiting process altogether.

If that happens, the two men will have to come up with a new business strategy.