Rashed Muhammad Al-Fawzan
Al-Riyadh
I do not know why we fail to make contingency plans, predict potential crises and formulate plans on how to deal with them. I am not saying we should predict exactly what happens in the future but we should at least have some plans in place to help us manage crises. We do not plan for crises such as heavy rain, fire, road accidents, droughts and the rise in the number of undocumented workers. Nor are we looking into developing alternative resources to oil. Recently, a fire ripped through Jazan Hospital and it appears that there were no plans to deal with potential fires in the hospital.
I am not saying that having plans in place would help us avert crises, but it would definitely alleviate the consequences of these crises. Let us take the example of the rains and floods in Jeddah in 2009. What plans did we have in place before torrential rains hit Jeddah that year? None at all. Many people in the coastal city were inundated and dozens of people lost their lives. What happened subsequent to these floods? Aramco implemented projects but the problem has not gone away.
Let us look at the road accidents that kill many people every day. We implemented Saher following the rise of road fatalities. We did not have plans to predict road fatalities and prevent them at the outset. The same holds true for public transportation, I mean the trains connecting cities. We only implemented the project following increasing traffic jams.
Let us look at the fire that ripped through Jazan Hospital. Do our hospitals take all the necessary safety precautions? What about our ministries, universities, schools, hotels, malls etc? Frankly speaking, I doubt that these places meet all the necessary safety requirements. Must a crisis take place and people die before we decide to design contingency and crisis management plans?
However, laying down rules and regulations is easy, but the difficulty lies in applying them. We should not issue a license to construct a new building if it does not satisfy safety requirements.
Predicting crises and taking preemptive action is important to prevent and manage potential crises. We should take potential traffic jams into consideration when we design roads and ensure that all safety requirements have been met. We should not wait until a crisis happens.
