It is a very poor country and lacks basic infrastructure and the people suffer from poverty and hard living conditions.

I lived for two months during the rainy season in Freetown. When it rains in that city, it rains very hard, worse than the rains in Jeddah.

The outcome after the rain, despite the poverty, is that life goes back to normal. Rainwater finds its way to the city’s drainage system, which leads to the sea. We do not see stagnant water because the English empire planned the city during the country’s colonial era.

In Jeddah on the other hand, there is a flood every time it rains, despite the billions of riyals spent on infrastructure.

No one should say that they were not warned in advance about the rain. The Presidency of Meteorology and Environment (PME) warned people about the approaching danger.

Do not put the blame on the heaviness of the rain, because Freetown rains are just as hard or even harder. The disaster in Jeddah is man-made.

I urge people not to say that what happened in Jeddah was down to the sins of its people, because in Freetown there are Muslims, Christians and idol worshipers and they do not suffer from destruction when it rains.

I urge people not to give excuses for those who did not do their job properly in the city. The victims in this rain are the innocent people of Jeddah.

If we want to know why Jeddah suffered, then we need to find those who did not do their job properly. We should find those who allowed the big businessmen to sell lands in valleys where no drainage system exists. All they cared about was to sell the land and make money, putting the lives of thousands of people in danger. We should hold responsible the contracting companies that carried out these projects, which pumped hundreds of billion of riyals into their accounts.

As for the projects carried out by big companies, they were then subcontracted to smaller incompetent companies who implemented them with lower quality workmanship.

We should hold responsible those who approved these projects after they were completed, because they did not check the quality of the work after being blinded by the money involved. These businessmen should be held accountable.

I think these projects should be carried out from now on by Japanese and Chinese companies who are not blinded by money and corruption. As for our experts, I think they should just be proud with the beautiful Ghazal car that they designed.