Editorial: An honorable campaign

Editorial: An honorable campaign
Updated 01 June 2012
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Editorial: An honorable campaign

Editorial: An honorable campaign

It ought to be a matter of considerable pride that young Saudi volunteers have taken it upon themselves to give bottles of chilled water and fruit juice to workers laboring out in the sun in parks and on road and construction sites. This is a demonstration of caring and consideration which demonstrates Saudi youth at its very best.
Unfortunately, what these young people are doing is also a cause for shame and indeed outrage. Put bluntly, it ought not to be necessary for these well-motivated individuals to be doing their cool-drink runs at all. It is the responsibility of the organizations that employ these workers to look after their welfare.
Yet as one of the volunteer drink providers told Arab News this week, it appears that the majority of employers, most from municipalities and construction companies, is simply not bothering to ensure that these expatriate workers are given refreshment and are protected from the very real dangers of dehydration. Worse these unfortunate laborers are frequently going unpaid for weeks or even months at a time, so even if they wished to go to a drinks stall to buy their own cool liquids, they simply lack the money to do so.
Most of us take our clean roads and neat and well-watered parks for granted as we drive by in air-conditioned comfort. We anticipate with quiet excitement the new buildings that are rising up beneath the hands of hundreds of laborers. We see the workers who tend parks and streets and labor on construction sites in summer sun, and assume that they are handled responsibly by their employers. We perhaps even presume that if they needed a thirst-quenching drink, they could take it from the hoses that they play upon the plants or that snake across construction sites.
But in fact of course, the majority of this water is recycled from human effluent and while it may be fit for gardening and building, is dangerous for human consumption. So, therefore, not only do many of these unfortunate laborers often lack proper drinking water but that which they have to hand could very well be carrying infections and diseases which will damage their own health, and if they prove contagious, the health of society as a whole.
As the students have said themselves in their social media messages that appear to have turned this drink-provision service into a viral movement, this is indeed “an honorable campaign”.
Perhaps perversely we should be grateful to employers who have neglected their responsibilities to their workforces and so produced this opportunity for young Saudis to exhibit the core decency of their generation and of society here as a whole. The youth in the Kingdom are not in fact all about showing off and driving dangerously in powerful cars. It would never occur to such hoodlum elements that there were poorly paid or indeed frequently unpaid expatriate workers, who play an essential role in keeping their environment attractive and who deserve their support.
What is also so striking about the young people who are bringing cooling drinks to these unfortunate people, is that it is clear that they are seeking no reward. They have identified a need by others less fortunate than themselves and are simply meeting it. One young man said that their efforts were “a small gesture that costs virtually nothing at all”. He is, however, wrong.
Caring about other people does involve interrupting their own busy days, spending their own money on the water and fruit juices and on fuel for their vehicles. They are actually putting themselves to some trouble to help others. The fact that they themselves do not appear to see it that way, makes what they are doing even more commendable.
Nevertheless, the need that they are fulfilling and the help that they are giving, should already have been provided by the employers of these laborers. The fact that it is not, is not only shameful but borders on the criminal. It is to be hoped that the selfless efforts of these young people will make employers, who until now could not have cared less, feel profound guilt for their appalling neglect and sort out proper arrangements for their workers.