How can anyone live without electricity these days, where temperatures reach more than 50 degrees Celsius?
The SEC is a sovereign entity with managerial independence. Therefore it is not supposed to behave like a company or a department owned by the Jeddah municipality. The reality, however, seems to be different.
When the municipality detects a violation in any building, it will ask the SEC to cut the power supply there. The company, which is supposed to be an independent entity that is not answerable to the municipality, will immediately obey.
Local newspapers recently reported that the mayor of Jeddah asked the SEC, not the chairman of the local municipality, to cut the power supply from the houses of 15 families in Thuwal, north of Jeddah.
This is a very harsh punishment especially that it came during an exceptionally hot summer. The company, whose main concern is supposed to be power generation and distribution, immediately obeyed. Yet it should not have implemented the municipality’s punishment.
The director of the company’s office in Rabigh said the power supply was cut from people’s houses on the orders of the Jeddah mayor because landlords failed to correct violations their tenants were alleged to have committed.
The mayor ordered that the power supply should never be restored unless the municipality says so. This drives me to ask a simple question. Is the Jeddah municipality the managerial head of the company? Is the company obliged to implement the orders of the municipality?
A citizen whose power was cut said his father is 75 years old and blind and that their house is under legal ownership.
“The municipality’s observations regarding the house were not commensurate with the harsh punishment handed to us,” he said.
On the other hand, citizens say power was being supplied to them long before municipal services were introduced.
They wondered whether there were no other means to rectify these violations other than the harsh punishment of cutting power, which they claim is against all human rights.
Electricity is the right of all humans. It is not a gift from the electricity company that is charging customers for its services.
The Jeddah municipality has no right whatsoever to cut electricity, water or telephone services. The power company is not obliged to carry out the orders of the municipality.
If the municipality does not respect the right of humans to electricity in this hot summer season, is the company obliged to carry out orders which were not issued by its management?
The weakest management is the one that cannot manage services without constantly handing out punishments, which are easy decisions for managers to make when it is consumers and not them that suffer.
It is a decision issued by someone sitting in a cozy and air-conditioned office, not someone sitting in a house shaken by winds.
