As now I am a mature Ph.D. student, the art of wasting time has become one of my majors. One important trick to waste my time and assuring myself of the legitimacy of the tactic is buying myself lunch.
Most of the time, I bring myself packed lunch from home so I am not tempted to indulge in what the British lunch hubs have to offer. It is needless to say that the UK is a sandwich heaven of its kind. One can find mouthwatering sandwiches with all kinds of fillings that makes you wonder whether you will be in the UK long enough to try all those different varieties. But sometimes I like to treat myself and (waste my time) and go to buy lunch. Once, I was at one of those places that offered lunch and it coincided with the lunch break for people working at a nearby construction site. The look on their faces while buying their lunch and having a nice break at a nice place really caught my attention and made me realize one of the reasons why western societies had evolved from the Dark Ages and reached that level of maturity in terms of citizens’ and human rights.
Each one of those workers probably is paid good enough to lead a decent life and I reckon that most of them have families and children. Even if his salary is below a certain average then he is entitled to various benefits from the government that compensate for the low income. The conditions at construction sites should meet certain standards to ensure workers’ safety (which is not compromised for any reason), and above all of this, all of them are citizens.
I just remembered our construction sites and the condition of the workers there. It’s really depressing that workers in our country are considered poor people who need mercy from us and often you see people buy them cold water and food from cheap places and consider this a good deed and then they take a picture and post it on Instagram. It’s obviously a good deed to quench the thirst of poor people but it’s really ugly that those people are poor in the first place. If employees are poor then we are having a major social disaster in the making. We seldom see any local among construction workers and nearly all of them are from what is considered (cheap labor) from foreign countries. Usually Saudis are reluctant in taking up these kind of jobs. Although I do believe that all jobs are respectable and we should not look down at any profession, but I do understand why Saudis refrain from doing these types of jobs. Who wants to be looked at as a poor person who is living at the mercy of others? Who wants to work from dawn till dusk and then paid in pennies?
A healthy society is the one in which everyone lives comfortably. I wouldn’t say luxurious, for that one needs to work harder and differently but everyone is entitled to live a decent life. This should be the goal of the ongoing Saudization drive.
@HatoonKadi
