The Jeddah municipality recently rejected directives to place electronic timers on main roads to indicate the remaining time to finalize major infrastructure projects.

This directive issued in Makkah by Prince Mishaal bin Abdullah is not the first of its kind, since a similar proposal was previously put forward by Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, who was the governor of Makkah before becoming the minister of education. At that time, Jeddah's municipality did respond by developing electronic timer boards for its projects, but these boards quickly disappeared after Prince Khaled Al-Faisal became minister of education.

While the municipality has placed traditional banners near its infrastructure projects, a visit to these sites revealed that none of them is electronic as requested, and that many of the municipality’s projects are currently delayed by several months.

Hani Abu Ras, Jeddah's mayor, said the municipality had replaced these electronic boards with signs that indicate the start date and end date of each project, as per specific requests by the Anti-Corruption Commission.