A recent newspaper article reported that health officials in Madinah had imposed a fine of SR10,000 on a private company active in the health business after it was found it had hired a plumber as a male nurse. The same fine was imposed on the plumber-nurse’s employer.
Last month, one of my relatives was admitted to a private hospital. To our shock we saw two cleaners taking him from his hospital bed to the X-ray room and back. At first we thought the hospital was using the cleaners only temporarily perhaps because of a staff shortage. But whenever my relative needed to be moved, the cleaners did the job. After seeing it happen over and over, we realized that in fact the hospital was simply hiring cleaners to do jobs which should be done by nurses or other professionals.
Who knows? Perhaps the cleaners are moving severely ill patients or even handling medical files. I am not biased against the cleaners, who might have originally been hired as cleaners but who have been given other jobs to do. It is only when there are problems that we see what the real situation is.
The same could be said of technicians, professionals and others employed in a variety of jobs. Many holders of fake qualifications continue to work in our companies, showrooms, workshops and offices — all doing their work without anyone being aware of the truth. These individuals know how to use time to learn and gain experience.
The question I want to address to the authorities is this: Who does less damage? A plumber who works as a nurse or a nurse who works as a plumber? A few weeks ago I brought a plumber to my house to fix a leaky pipe. After spending several hours and charging SR450, the plumber said that everything was fine. In conversation with the man, I found that he was a trained mathematics teacher who had come to the Kingdom to work in a private school. He had given up that job, however, and decided to be a plumber. The result was that I had to spent SR5,000 to correct the damage the teacher-plumber caused to the pipes in my bathroom.
