Figuratively speaking, heads are starting to roll in Jeddah in the aftermath of November’s killer floods. Saudi Gazette/Okaz report that foreigners holding high positions in the Jeddah mayor’s office are to be sacked. These individuals may not have played a direct—or any—role in the Jeddah flooding, but they hold their positions outside legal requirements, as discovered during the flood investigations, and so must go.
This strikes me as trimming around the edges of the infrastructure problems, but cleaning up the system is a necessary step if accountability is to be achieved. Pity for those people who are losing their jobs (and fat salaries!), though…
Leading foreigners at mayoralty to be fired
Saud Al-BarakatiJEDDAH – The service of foreigners holding leading jobs at the Jeddah Mayoralty will be terminated within two weeks, sources said.
The order to the mayoralty to terminate their services has come from the Control and Investigation Bureau following the recently completed investigation into the Jeddah flood disaster that claimed over 120 lives and destroyed numerous properties east of Jeddah.
An American national was found to occupy the most senior position held by a foreigner, as an assistant to the mayor, with a “whopping” monthly salary of SR120,000 ($32,000), the sources said.
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March:14:2010 - 23:54
Hopefully it is like debriding a wound, cleaning the edges before full surgical repair.
The head of the advertising department at the Jeddah Mayoralty was said to have been transferred to the dengue fever fighting program as a disciplinary measure.
Having done research in an area with a current epidemic of dengue fever, which scared me to death though I wasn’t particularly at risk (rather like the Attencion! Colera! sign on the lab door, even though the cholera itself was in petrie dishes) I find this an excellent disciplinary measure.
Two weeks notice is very short both for the employees fired and the units they were working in. However since executives fired for cause are usually escorted out of their places of employment at the same time as they are being told they are being terminated 2 weeks is on the more generous side.
March:15:2010 - 02:13
There’s a mass eviction of contractors going on in the municipality, both Saudi and non Saudi. All contracts are being sieved through and salaries have been delayed. A lot of the money that was used to fund contractors (big and small) were siphoned from other projects, and now that the municipality is under greater scrutiny this fund has dried up. I’m contractor there myself, so rough times ahead it seems.