Two days ago, my fellow writer Amal Zahid wrote an article, titled “Even donkey’s meat,” directed to the officials at the Ministry of Social Affairs with a photo of a poor Saudi woman supporting her five divorced daughters, the widow of her late son and their children.
Regrettably her voice went unheard. It seems the staff of the ministry has been on a long vacation.
I wrote under this very column on July 25 about an old man named Dhuwaibi Al-Zaydi. I titled the article: “What a smile, Zaydi.”
No one from the ministry responded to the article despite the fact I also inserted in my column a photo of the crippled old man supporting three children.
The picture showed the old man living in a wooden shanty in his small village with no air-conditioner to cool him in the heat of the summer. I will break a pot if ministry officials responded to my article!
Al-Zaydi’s case was broadcast three years before my column on Al Arabiya.
Saud Khalaf who interviewed the old man for the channel said no one from the ministry showed any response to the report.
And while nobody from the ministry has responded to my column regarding the plight of the same man either, a philanthropist e-mailed me asking for contact information, which I provided.
As for the officials of the Ministry of Social Affairs, it’s obvious that they have been taking vacations for most of the summer.
Is the role of the ministry limited only to taking the emoluments of the poor people under social security from the Finance Ministry and deposit the money in their bank accounts?
Is the ministry not supposed to study each case separately and make exceptions?
There are poor men and women needing to pay their rent and bills. They also have to buy school supplies for their children and eat without begging from the others.
The voice of a poor woman seen on TV recently begging for tomatoes or “even donkey’s meat” from local welfare societies is enough of a message to the ministry. The tragedy was that the welfare societies had to tell the woman that their stores were empty.
More pressing questions that I want the ministry to answer: If the welfare societies are unable to help this poor woman, where then is the support given to them by the ministry? Where are the donations of the philanthropists to these societies? Where are the donations of their own members? Are their jobs simply décor they add to their resumes to ensure them of high positions or to give them notoriety?
I need an answer to these questions from the Ministry of Social Affairs — when they get around to finishing their vacations.
