By Hala Al-Qahtani
Al-Watan
POVERTY is one of the most dangerous epidemics. It is capable of destroying a whole nation. It not only affects a single country or nation but spreads to other countries, penetrating the body of the whole world, thus settling in every country and feeding the misery of its living creatures. It kills and displaces everything that breaths on the earth.
Asma, a Saudi worker, received her termination notice with great shock. The director of the HR department at the company told her that they were forced to terminate her service because of falling oil prices and that the same notice has been given to six other employees. He also told her that she was lucky for having received two-month salary as compensation.
She returned to her office and tried to accommodate that calamity. Then she started thinking about the money she spends on purchasing diabetes medicine for her son, on education of her son Ahmed, a Grade V student, school expenses of Ahmed and his sister, the house rent and the salary paid to the driver who takes her to work every day.
She thought about the thousands of life requirements which she would relinquish. However, she was unable to convince herself the reason for her retrenchment by her huge foreign company, which has been expanding its activities in the Kingdom. The company that signed a multi-billion riyal contract with the state-owned oil giant is now terminating her from service for oil price fall!?
She opened the computer and went through the achievements she had made for the company. She also reviewed the emails of praise she received from company management. She forwarded a copy of those letters of appreciation to her manager. The manager came to her office and informed her that the termination notice had nothing to do with her performance and that the measure was taken on the basis of Labor Law to protect the company’s interests.
During the same week Asma saw the appointment of three non-Saudis and were given her position and others after making some changes in their titles. They were given higher salaries ranging between SR30,000 to SR60,000. In the second week, the manager told her with a broad smile that she can leave the company before the end of notice period as her presence has now become redundant.
Asma went out of the office early on that day and paid the rent for two months so that she would not find herself and her children in the street. In the meantime, she communicated with the Labor Ministry for six months to get her reinstated in the company but her efforts went fruitless.
One year passed with extreme difficulty. People stopped giving her loans. She knocked at the doors of companies, shops and even small kiosks to get a job, unfortunately she could not get one. The main reason was her qualification and experience, which were higher than what was required for the vacant jobs.
Since the beginning of this year she has sold out furniture of her modest apartment. In the meantime, she started begging for the livelihood of her children. Whenever she went to a grocery store she asked clients to pay for some foodstuffs. She also approached women to buy some food for her children and resorted to begging after she ran out of solutions.
I saw Asma wearing niqab when I went to a pharmacy to purchase some medicine. She requested me to purchase insulin vaccines for her son as she does not have enough money. I agreed to buy insulin for her son and asked her whether she required anything else. She then grabbed my hand and could not control her tears, a scene that would break even stones.
Poverty is the real scourge that threatens humans and deprives them of all values. People go to the extremes when they do not get their life requirements and they are forced to adopt inappropriate methods. Others will judge these poor people as criminals and morally deprived, without considering their helpless situation. There are millions of people who spend sleepless nights for not having even a loaf of bread to satisfy their hunger.
With poverty, spiritual values are replaced by mundane values. The most painful thing is the disappearance of compassion and people’s solidarity with the downtrodden. Some people and organizations lie on providing assistance to the poor and publish bulletins to spread their lies and you see millions of poor and displaced people languishing under poverty.
People around the world are not born poor. They are impoverished in the name of development. Superpowers have robbed the resources of weak countries during their colonial campaigns, depriving poor countries of their resources to become impoverished nations. Poverty can kill people of any country. There is no goodness in nations that contribute to spreading poverty.
