By Faris Al-Qahtani

Okaz/Saudi Gazette

RIYADH — The Shoura Council on Tuesday lashed out at the Saudi Red Crescent Authority (SRCA) accusing it of not being able to perform its duties despite the huge resources allocated to it.

The council members described the authority’s efforts as dissipated and not focused and said it was not properly discharging its assignments.

Adnan Al-Bar, a member, said the authority has 161 medical doctors of whom is a consultant and four others are specialists.

“The authority has 391 centers in a country that is large enough to be considered a continent,” he said.

Al-Bar called for constituting a neutral committee to consider the work of the authority and to assess its human, financial and administrative resources.

He said the committee should decide whether the authority was able to provide ambulance services or not.

Mofreh Al-Zahrabni, another member, said the air ambulance was a distinctive service that the authority used to provide but it was discontinued.

“The authority had 11 aircraft to provide fast first aid to the seriously sick or injured people and to airlift them to the nearest hospitals,” he said.

“The problem is that these aircraft are not in service any more because there are no landing platforms for them. They are not allowed to use the platforms of other agencies,” he added.

Zahrani said the aircraft have not only stopped work but they have been stored away in the warehouses of a neighboring country.

“The storage of the aircraft has been done according to a rent contract, which is costing the government a huge sum of money,” he said.

Maj. Gen. Abdullah Al-Sadoun said about 70 percent of the road deaths happen because the ambulance service does not arrive on time.

He asked the council to summon the minister of health to know the ministry’s view point regarding the authority.

Samiya Bukhari, a female member, said though the Kingdom is considered to be the top in the region in number of road accidents, yet the authority’s ambulances hardly arrive at the scenes of accidents on time to save the victims.

She recalled that international standards set the speed at which an ambulance should arrive at the scene of the accident at 10 minutes inside cities and towns and 20 minutes in the far away areas.

“The number of ambulances cars in different parts of the Kingdom is far from enough to cover this big country,” she said.