JEDDAH, 10 January 2008 — The English versions of many of the Kingdom’s official government websites are either outdated, fail to open or include inaccurate information, frustrating many non-Arabic speaking expatriates wanting to follow up on official matters.
While attempting to access information from the English versions of official websites, visitors often meet dead ends. This is the case with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry’s English website (www.commerce.gov.sa), which last published a news item on June 5, 2007. Prior to that the last piece of news added was on Nov. 1, 2006.
The amount of news provided on the website is in clear contrast to the ethos behind the ministry’s establishment. The same website mentions, “The Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MOCI), since its formation, has been keen to develop and expand domestic and foreign trade, to adopt initiatives fostering the role of the private sector.”
While the Arabic version of the website is regularly updated, the English version only contains seven news items. One was published in 2007 and six in 2006. It even has a box containing an advertisement for an expo in Japan that took place in 2005. Meanwhile, the Arabic version comprises 43 pages with 642 news items dating as far back as 2002.
A foreign journalist who has been working in the Kingdom for more than 20 years said, “I had made an interview with the vice president of Saudi Post and I wanted to add some background information. So I retrieved that information from their English version.”
He added that he received a telephone call the next day from the vice president’s office saying that the information he had published was inaccurate. “I explained that I got the information from their official website and so they quickly apologized. They said that the website’s Arabic version was more accurate and it was better to obtain information from there than the site’s English version,” said the journalist, who didn’t want to be named in this report.
The Ministry of Information and Culture’s Arabic website (www.info.gov.sa) has an icon on the top left corner of the page with the word English written on it. Click on it and it fails to direct readers to the English version of the site.
The official site of the Saudi Embassy in London lists inaccurate information. “The website lists the requirements to obtain a family residency visa. It says applicants must have an authorization letter from the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is to be obtained in Saudi Arabia by one’s sponsor,” said Muhammad Ishaq, a British expatriate in Jeddah.
“When I was doing the leg work to bring my family from the UK, I was left pretty confused. I ran around asking my sponsor for a Foreign Affairs letter. My sponsor said it wasn’t needed. I then posted my paperwork to a middleman in the UK to acquire a visa on behalf of my family. He read the website and asked for the letter,” said Ishaq, adding that it was only later that it transpired that the letter was not needed.
“It was a huge headache because I went so many times to the Istiqdam Office asking them about it,” he said.
A brief look at the government’s websites show that the most updated website is that of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is regularly updated in English, Arabic and French. Items published in the Arabic version are an exact match to what is on the English version of the site.
Abdul Aziz Al-Mulhim, assistant deputy minister of information and culture and general supervisor for the ministry’s IT department, said that his ministry’s website is under construction.
“The items published are not the latest,” he said when contacted by Arab News. Al-Mulhim said he could not elaborate further on the topic, as he had to rush to a meeting.
