JEDDAH — Fatma Azb, former director of a women’s training center and internal scholarship program in Abha, has been removed from her position after finding guilty of highhandedness and violating Education Ministry regulations.
Azb was accused of mismanagement of public money and of obstructing the work of 11 educational supervisors appointed by the ministry to work at her center. She also reportedly did not allow them to punch their cards, locked their office and forced them to sit in a single room.
A special panel set up by the ministry found her guilty of committing excesses against her colleagues and recommended to remove her from the administrative position and cut 10 days from her monthly salary. But the punishment against the woman director was not implemented.
Azb’s victims then approached the press to raise the issue and press for action against the woman. Gharama Al-Asmari, director of the education department in Riyadh, has been following up the case.
Informed sources at the department told Arab News that Azb had presented complaints to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, the Shoura Council and the Court of Grievances after she had been removed from her position.
A high-level committee — comprising representatives from the Ministry of Civil Service, Ministry of Education and General Bureau of Supervision Bureau — investigated Azb’s case again and ratified the verdict of the ministerial panel. The committee also asked her to work as a schoolteacher.
Hanan Al-Hafdhi, an educational supervisor and one of Azb’s victims, said she and her colleagues had suffered for two years as a result of injustices committed by Azb against them. “Azb wouldn’t allow us to punch our cards and we used to keep a secret register to mark our entry and exit.”
Hafdhi’s husband Abdul Qader, who works as deputy director of a secondary school in Abha, described his wife’s ordeal in the past two years as hellish. “I had to live with the ordeal of my wife throughout this period,” he added. He favored Azb’s appointment as a schoolteacher saying it suited her dominating personality.
