Some news shames the reader while some creates confusion among readers who find they are not sure how they should respond to what they read.
Consider this: A delegation from the Saudi Development Fund traveled to Eritrea to attend the opening of a power project to which the fund had contributed SR35 million. The power plant is a major strategic project in the eastern African country, providing its capital, Asmara, and three other urban areas with their electricity needs.
Another report in our newspapers spoke of the same fund providing SR400 million to Bangladesh for financing a number of projects as well as for rehabilitating various service sectors.
These and other kinds of assistance are being provided to other countries while our own continues to be burdened with many problems. It is as if the budget were no longer struggling under a deficit, that unemployment rates had been reduced and poverty a thing of the past.
I would like to pose the following questions to the chairman of the Saudi Development Fund.
• Which is more important — providing electricity to Saudi villages still struggling in darkness or to villages in other countries?
• Which is more worthy of financing — service projects in Saudi Arabia or in other countries?
We have to remember that the fund is providing loans to finance roads in other countries at the same time that the smell of mangled bodies continues to fill the air along our poorly-maintained highways in both the north and south of the Kingdom.
- Arab News From the Local Press 3 July 2003
