Saud Al-Fawzan
IN Western countries when people face a social problem, the first thing they do is search for the cause of the problem, thoroughly analyze it and then come up with solutions to ensure that the problem does not occur again. If the problem does happen again, the people who worked on finding solutions will be held accountable and be investigated.
Unfortunately, if we fail to find a solution for a complicated problem, we leave the problem unsolved or ignore it. If the same problem happens again, then the concerned government official will talk again about the problem as if it is something new and start working on solving it while ignoring all past attempts and not benefit from them. This is the sad and painful reality.
The problem of road accidents that have claimed the lives of many female teachers has not been solved for a long time although the position of the Minister of Education has been held by several ministers. Every week, one or more female teachers dies tragically on our roads. All education ministers say the same thing: we will solve this problem and we will do this and that. However, nothing has been done.
Female teachers continue to die on our roads. Last year, over 150 teachers were killed or seriously injured in road accidents. I am sure that if female teachers were allowed to drive their own cars to the remote schools where they work, they would reach them safely and unscathed. The problem is that most drivers who drive those teachers are young and reckless or under training. We do not see female teachers dying on roads in nearby countries. Why is this happening here?
Does the Ministry of Education know that over 35 percent of road accidents in the Kingdom involve female teachers who work in remote schools? The sad thing is that the ministry does not want to admit it but it has failed in solving this problem and does not want to refer this issue to the Shoura Council for more discussion. The ministry is praising itself on the compensation it pays to the victims’ families when it should be working hard to find a solution to this problem.
