The Directorate of Social Affairs requested Arab News to provide the address of the family, and Director Abdullah Al-Tawi said that his department was trying to discover why the family’s social insurance pension was cut off.
Al-Tawi added that he would also seek the help of a charity to provide necessary assistance to the family.
The official denied that charity organizations in Jeddah were not doing enough to help those in need, as suggested in the newspaper report.
Meanwhile, a Saudi mother of 10, Umm Abdullah, told Arab News that she and her children were not getting any help from government agencies.
She and her children are sleeping on pavements after she was dismissed from her job as a cleaner in a charity society in Jeddah. Her husband is unemployed and rarely visits her. He has not even taken the necessary steps to include the names of his children in his family register and social status card.
Following her dismissal from work and consequent failure to pay rent, she was thrown out of her apartment. The dilapidated room she rented later tumbled in the last Jeddah flood, she said.
“When I sought help from the General Organization for Social Insurance, the official demanded that I bring my husband to the office, which is impossible as he rarely visits us,” she said.
She added that her children were illiterate, because they were not allowed to study in school without proper documents.
She said she went to many offices to get her problems solved. Even the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) promised to help her, but “so far, no help has come up,” she added.
However, a source at the NSHR branch in Jeddah told Arab News that it had asked Social Affairs and the Directorate of Education in April to do the needful to help Umm Abdullah, but none of the departments had responded to its letters.
