JEDDAH: The Jeddah municipality has asked 90 of its employees to pay back a total of SR5 million that it had originally used for training, local Arabic daily Al-Madinah reported on Sunday.
The newspaper said the municipality took action after investigations by a government body revealed that the money had been incorrectly allocated as a “special provision” in the budget.
It quoted municipality sources as saying that the authority’s finance department has been sending letters to the employees since last week asking them to reimburse the money.
They added that the money was given to the workers as incentives or to spend on training sessions to upgrade their professional skills and that high-level management had known about this. They said the recipients were holding relatively low positions below undersecretary or head of department level. The sources said the municipality had now told each employee to consider the money received, ranging between SR3,000 and SR100,000, as a loan to be deducted from his salary.
“This is a weird decision considering that the money, from the special item in the budget, was cashed several years ago as incentives or spent on training sessions,” an employee told the newspaper.
He said the workers were surprised by e-mails from the municipality’s administration department asking them to contact them in connection with the issue.
“We are still waiting for an explanation on how the money could be considered a loan when it was paid to us by municipality leaders to encourage us and improve our performance,” he said.
