When are we going to wake up?

Muhammad Al-Ehaidib
Okaz newspaper

We should have paid heed to the various warnings we received. Underpasses at Al-Suwaidi District in Riyadh were flooded with water just like the ones in Jeddah when rains hit the city a couple of years ago. But we didn’t learn anything. Similarly, we didn’t learn anything from the first flood that hit Jeddah to prevent the second one. We had no contingency plan in place when the second flood occurred.

The inability of hospitals or emergency units to admit certain number of cases on a daily basis is a warning that these hospitals and units will not be able to admit a large number of patients during emergencies. Has anything been done about this issue?

There is a continuous crisis with water shortage, corruption and monopolies. The frequent power outages this summer signal our lack of contingency plans to respond to such crises. But we are still not doing anything about it. Instead we refuse to admit that there is a crisis in the first place. How will we cope in the future?

The least we can do is to identify the problems and attempt to resolve them so that we can avoid adversities in the future. An adversity does not have to be an economic, political or security crisis. It could be a health or energy crisis. It could be a water shortage. It is crucial that we benefit from crises that take place in times of prosperity. May Allah make this country always prosperous!