JEDDAH, 28 November 2003 — Mobile camera phones are hot sellers this Eid season despite a Kingdomwide ban and a significant increase in retail price.
New models by mobile phone giants Sony Ericsson and Nokia are selling like hot cakes in a healthy black market.
Ahmad, 29, has witnessed the selling of phones on numerous occasions. “The exchange is always the same. The vendor almost never has the actual phone on him, for fear of any random searches. But the vendor disappears to his car and within 10 minutes returns with the phone with the line, ‘You are lucky. This is the last one’.”
The phones were banned in September last year at the urging of the chief of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice following reports that they were being used by men to secretly photograph women. But that has not stopped the phones from being sold.
Abdul Qader, 21, works at a mobile phone stand in a popular Jeddah shopping mall. “You will not find those particular models sold by official agents here, which has created a lot of demand for them because they are hard to come by.”
One particular model sold in Europe for close to SR2,000 is being sold in the Kingdom for nearly SR3,000. “An eager young woman bought one well over that price, but prices should drop after Eid,” Abdul Qader added.
The controversial phones are being bought from neighboring Gulf countries and sold for up to double their original price.
“I think banning the phones was a futile exercise,” says Abu Hassan, 45. “Because the demand exists, someone is going to supply it, and we should not blame the technology but those that misuse it.”
Others agree that banning the camera phones is no solution. According to Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, editor in chief of Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, “preventing abuse of technology must be done through education, not through prohibition. Most people use the camera attachments on their phones for good purposes, some are useful to engineers and doctors and homebuyers, others use them for innocent communication. Only very few people misuse them.”
Al-Watan newspaper reported that in January a teacher caught one of six girls taking shots of others during class at an all-girl college in Dammam.
The school administration confiscated the phones, which had been purchased in Bahrain, and forced the girls to sign a pledge not to repeat the act.
Also in January, it was reported that a committee made up of various ministries had been set up to discuss the sale and import of high-tech gadgets. But the ban on the popular phones has yet to be lifted.
