JEDDAH, 7 January 2008 — The mayor’s office in Jeddah together with the city’s municipality have allegedly deprived 200 poor families the opportunity of setting up their own businesses by shelving a local self-employment project.
Habeeb Al-Salami, district head of South Kandara, and his colleague, Muhannad Al-Khayyat, were the brains behind a municipal project under which 200 kiosks were allotted to poor people with a view to providing them with a steady income. However, the project, entitled “Toward a Productive Neighborhood,” has now been canceled and kiosks are to be handed over to local businessmen.
“The mayor’s office shelved the project... The authorities have handed over the kiosks to local businessmen,” said Al-Salami.
Al-Salami and Al-Khayyat had proposed to the mayor’s office a scheme to set up 200 kiosks on footpaths in the Kandara neighborhood. They had suggested that certain businessmen would supply goods to sell on a soft repayment basis and that the footpaths be made attractive by having trees and green areas.
The proposal was accepted by the local administration and welcomed by the media and several social workers. However, it was later reported that the mayor’s office and the municipal council had a different plan.
“We were surprised by the local administration’s decision to launch a profit-oriented investment program instead of the self-employment scheme for the poor in the district. In the past six months, the original scheme had also received great support and encouragement from society and the media,” Al-Khayyat said.
The two men said they would take up the issue with higher authorities. They would sue the mayor’s office for damages worth SR5 million (10 percent of the estimated loss the poor families would suffer because of the cancellation). The activists intend to distribute the sum equally among the affected families in the district.
Al-Khayyat added that the change in the project would also make the life of the poor hard because of the likely rise in property prices if the new business project were implemented.
According to legal expert Abdullah Baruth, the Shariah law stipulates that the originator of an idea has full rights over it and should be compensated if someone else took advantage of it.
