JEDDAH: It’s a common scene around government departments: Men sitting at tables under parasols near the entrance offering a number of services to help expedite bureaucratic procedures.
These services range from basic clerical work, such as translating documents into Arabic, making photocopies and putting your documents in the requisite blue plastic folder.
In front of the Jeddah branch of the Department of Civil Affairs, these fixers also offer — for a fee of a few hundred riyals — their connections inside to expedite requests for official birth certificates. This hassle-free back door service has arisen due to the frustration and difficulties people have had obtaining birth certificates through the proper channel: which is taking a number.
“There are no more numbers available for the day,” said a worker inside when Arab News recently visited the department with a man seeking to get his newborn a birth certificate. “Come back tomorrow.”
Lines to obtain these numbers start forming well before dawn. By the time the office opens at 8 a.m., all the numbers for the day have normally been taken.
Husbands of foreign residents who have given birth in the Kingdom need to obtain this number in order to wait for hours to get an official birth certificate to validate the temporary birth certificate issued by the hospital. The official birth certificate is a requirement in order for the child’s name to be added to the expatriate’s iqama (work/residence permit).
Because this all-important task is stymied by a system that often requires people to return more than once to wait in line for hours, the fixers outside have developed their own service, taking advantage of their connections inside, to expedite the request for the birth certificate. They advertise this as the hassle-free back door, for a fee.
“I paid SR500 to obtain my newborn child’s birth certificate,” said one Jordanian resident of Jeddah who requested anonymity. “I don’t have extra money to throw around, but I was forced to do this. I couldn’t afford further delay. I have a job. I can’t spare all this time only to fail again to get my papers processed through the proper channels.”
Abu Rayan, a Moroccan father of two, said he attempted three times to get a birth certificate. This was his fourth attempt. This time he arrived at 3 a.m.
Arab News went with a man to the fixers outside to find out about this express service. Camped outside the office under a striped umbrella, the man we approached started off by requesting SR1,000 for the birth certificate service. After 15 minutes of haggling he dropped his fees to SR600.
“It’s your choice,” he said. “You can come here at 3 a.m. and wait in line and hope for a number, or you can pay SR600 to obtain your child’s birth certificate hassle free. I know this process. I advise you do the latter.”
The payment was made two hours before the department closed its doors for the day.
The middleman called a contact inside the department. He requested the newborn’s name and promised to deliver the certificate within one working day.
“If you had come early in the morning I would have managed to deliver on the same day,” he said. Two days later he came through.
Most people scoff at paying such a price for a birth certificate. By sticking to the rules, they end up engaged for hours on end just to make face contact with the official in charge of issuing this document.
But even the number-taking system involves fixers who obtain tickets and sell them in the department’s commissary. People pay up to SR200 for one of these numbers because once they’re gone, they must return another day.
“I arrived shortly after 2 a.m. I am third in line and this is my third attempt to process my papers,” said Abu Mohammed, a Sudanese Jeddah resident in his early 40’s who took it upon himself to begin organizing the queue by writing down the names of people in the order in which they arrived in an attempt to prevent latecomers from buying a ticket and cutting in line.
“It’s a fair solution,” he said. “The names are numbered. We can’t stand in a line for more than six hours. So the best solution is to take the visitors’ names and number them based on their time of arrival.”
Abu Mohammed’s attempts do not solve the matter, claim a number of residents. “The employee will distribute the tickets in the same sequence on the list but some of numbers are withheld and not distributed,” alleged a resident. “For example if you are the fourth person to arrive, you might be handed number 7 or 8,” he said.
Abu Mohammed said he had been to the department three times: the first time he arrived at 8 a.m. to discover all the tickets for the day were already claimed (or bought); the second time he arrived at 6:30 a.m. with the same results. “There were 200 people already waiting in line,” he said.
It was on his third attempt, which began at 5 a.m., that Abu Muhammad decided to start keeping tabs on the 65 or so people who had already signed the registry and obtained their numbers. Despite past promises to eliminate the racket of selling tickets, it was clear from this recent visit to the Department of Civil Affairs that fixers still offer their special expedited services utilizing their contacts inside.
The head of the Department of Civil Affairs for the western region told Arab News he was not authorized to speak to the press.
