Mohammed Maarouf Al-Shibani
Whenever I see the minister of water justifying his decision to raise the water tariff, I find him using the same old pretext. He says, “ the water was subsidized and citizens used it irrationally, therefore, the subsidy had to go.”
I am just here reminding him that the subsidy on water was one of the basic rules in the Kingdom. King Abdul Aziz, the founder, used to dig wells and made them a public property so that every citizen should have an access to enough quantity of the vital fluid.
At that time, King Abdul Aziz did not have oil or money. His sons followed the suit. Water was made available to each and everyone. So Mr. minister please do not say that this is too much for us!
I will rather believe that an increase in the water tariff was done at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the light of the sharp plunge in oil prices. The IMF might have made this condition because we did not benefit from the huge wealth provided to us by the first economic boom.
Whatever the reasons for the rise of water prices might be, we always hoped that our ministers would be as solid as water dams, and would protect citizens from rising prices.
The ministers should not put burden on citizens with extra costs unless these costs are rationalized so as to benefit the general budget.
We request our ministers to rationalize their decisions before asking us to rationalize our water consumption.
