Four thousand families in Arar live in what looks like shipping containers. The walls are made of wood and the roof is a piece of metal. The houses are open to the weather, whatever it is. When it is hot, the metal roof makes the houses as hot as ovens and when it rains, there are puddles everywhere in the house. Of course, the latest cold wave to hit the country has made things even worse. The people have had to live in actual freezing temperatures made worse by their flimsy houses. This is not an imaginary story; it is a real one that was carried by Al-Hayat newspaper. Needless to say, it shocked many people in Saudi Arabia.
The newspaper also carried interviews with some of the residents. The complaints were quite simple and quite tragic. The people deserve decent lives and they are being forced to live in substandard accommodation with no schools, no medical clinics, and an intermittent electrical supply. Most of the people survive on donations and charity.
How is it that we have known nothing of this bleak situation and those who have to endure it? The story is grim and it took on an extra dose of bitter reality when the same paper published the news of the death of a 15- year-old girl as a result of a recent cold wave in the Kingdom. The girl was asleep in her bed, but the freezing cold seeped through the walls and the metal roof and she froze to death. Masahal -- the girl's name -- was not the first victim of the cold in Saudi Arabia, but her death came as a shock because it revealed that poverty levels in her small village were beyond belief, at least for the majority of relatively affluent city dwellers.
The fact that 4,000 families are living in such horrible circumstances makes one wonder about what is being done by officials and the society to narrow the sharp contrast between extreme riches in cities and extreme poverty in some remote villages.
In a country that is considered rich by any standard, there is absolutely no excuse for such situations. In a society that congratulates itself on its piety, it is incredible to hear of people dying of cold or hunger.
In the consumer society that we have become, people compete to buy the latest cars, jewelry and designer clothes. When they feel charitable, they choose the conventional accepted ways to donate money. I remember a story published in the Saudi press about two businessmen bidding to build an expensive mosque; one of them won the bid to build a SR20-million mosque. If we have this mentality when we know that there are those who need to survive, feed their children and buy medicine, I think it is time to rethink our charitable impulses. When our wealthy businessmen are racing to build one shopping center after another, and when you hear of huge amounts of money paid for a "unique" phone number or a car plate, you must stop and think about the priorities of our society.
And while we are thinking about priorities, we have to wonder about the poverty project that was proposed by the government a few years ago, but did not seem to take off. Maybe it is about time to shake up a few bureaucrats.
It is sad to hear that a TV reporter was stopped while filming the "metal container" houses in Arar, and that his tapes were confiscated. Fortunately, people still heard of what happened and the pictures were posted on the Internet -- which means that covering up the stink is not going to work. It just means that there is an unfinished job, that someone has to take responsibility and that action has to be taken.
© Arab News 2008
