The administrative court here has fined four municipal officials SR80,000 each for negligence because they went ahead with the construction of the King Fahd underpass despite safety concerns raised by a contractor.

The court found that the four had broken rules and regulations during their tenure on a committee overseeing the construction with Prince Mohammad bin Fahad in Dammam.

Two of the defendants hold secretary general positions in the Eastern Province, the third is a director of maintenance and operations, while the fourth is the supervising director for the municipality's construction and projects agency.

The Control and Investigation Board (CIB) had accused the officials of ignoring the contents of a contractor's letter, which stated that the original construction designs had been found unsafe after a review by specialized international firms.

The officials had forced the contractor to go ahead with the project without assigning a third party to verify the accuracy of the contractor's contentions about the safety issues involved.

The prosecution argued that the officials had behaved in an unacceptable and unreasonable manner. The officials had failed to draft a contract to oversee the construction as required under such contracts. They signed off the project without making sure that the underpass was safe.

The CIB presented as evidence letters between the contractor and the secretary general of construction and projects. Other evidence included the secretary general's admission that the four officials did not assign a third party to ensure the safety of the plans because they trusted the designer and consultant who supervised the project despite their lack of experience.

The CIB said the defendants should have stopped the project and demanded a redesign after the contractor notified them about technical faults and sought the help of engineers.

The municipality's secretary general and president of the central directorate for development projects said there was an administrative error involved in the process.

Meanwhile, the Justice Ministry has denied that it removed pictures from social media of an elderly women being carried down the steps of a courthouse in Samita on a plastic chair.

Some had accused the ministry of acting in an insensitive manner by allowing the old woman to be carried down the stairs in such a manner.

Ibrahim Al-Tayar, director of information and publishing at the ministry, rejected accusations that government officials had removed or obscured images of the woman.

It was reported that the woman went to Samita's court and had to be carried to see a judge on the fifth floor.

The judge tried to tell her to assign one of her children to litigate on her behalf but she refused, so the judge ordered a court employee to take her to her house 50 km away from the court, the report stated.

Al-Tayar said the woman came to her second appointment on Sep. 2 and gave her papers to the court's employees. "She went up to see the judge two hours before her appointment on her own without the help of anyone.

The judge heard her statement and wrote it down. The office ordered employees to help her down the steps by seating her on a plastic chair," he said.