Khalaf Al-Harbi

Okaz

 

IT sometimes happens that you make a promise that you may not be able to keep for one reason or another. For instance, whenever I plan to travel, I promise my children to bring them gifts that may need three trucks to carry. With a tight schedule and last minute commitments, I hardly find time to catch my flight, let alone buy the gifts.



When I arrive home, I start telling my children about the circumstances that prevented me from keeping my promise. I read on their faces a simple question: Why do you make promises if you cannot keep them?



Shamelessly, I admit that I have broken the promise but I also tell them that I bought the presents but forgot them at the hotel and that they will be air-shipped within three days.



This is exactly what the Housing Ministry has been doing. It had promised to distribute housing units among eligible citizens in a few months. The months have passed and there were no houses to distribute. Every time the ministry comes up with lame excuses that will not convince even a 10-year-old child.



Only a day before, a local newspaper reported that the ministry would distribute 4,000 houses in Jazan, the majority of which were built by a charitable society.



So instead of correcting its projects that have been faltering for three years, the ministry has resorted to distributing the houses constructed by King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Foundation for Development Houses Dedicated to His Parents. The ministry was distributing houses that it has not built, only to make people believe that it has kept its promise.



In fact, the ministry’s products hardly exceeded 1,500 housing units, which are without any basic infrastructure. The majority of you may think that basic infrastructure means roads, pavements, lighting and telephone lines. The matter goes further than this. These houses are without electricity or water. Who will live in a house that does not have electricity or water?



Many years will pass while the ministry’s houses will remain vacant. They may only be inhabited by ghosts or illegal expatriates who may be able to supply them with electricity in their own devious ways. A large number of investigative press reports will be written about the security and social hazards these vacant houses are creating. The hazards file will get bigger and bigger, until high orders are issued to demolish these houses.



Of course, demolition is faster than construction. The citizens who are supposed to be given these houses will instead be given numbers of office papers to compensate them for their demolished houses.



I, therefore, advise citizens in Jazan, who may receive text messages from the Housing Ministry to come and receive their houses to make sure first if they have been built by charitable organizations or by the ministry. This is because the ministry’s houses are dark and have no water. So the citizens will be watchful for ghosts while furnishing them.