Okaz

WHAT can we do? I am personally in a dilemma regarding the decisions of officials who seek to cover up their substandard performances at the expense of our comfort, convenience and circumstances. Instead of doing their job responsibly, they want us to change our timings, circumstances and work to suit their shortcomings.

An example of this is what is happening at the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC).

The minister of electricity denied any power outages in the country and said when they do occur, they are only normal and within the level of the cuts everywhere in the world. He promised that there would be no more power cuts in the future.

At the same time the chairman of the board of directors of the SEC asked us, in statements published recently by Al-Riyadh newspaper, not to do laundry or ironing at noon and to postpone this until the evening. He believed that this was a reasonable request which was within the social norms.

I have a question to ask him: Have you ever heard an electricity provider in the world intervening in the private lives of the people? Has any power service provider decided when the people should wash their clothes, iron them, take their baths or shave their beards?

I have seen many ways of regulating electricity consumption but none of them were as strange as the proposal of the SEC chairman.

During my study in Britain I lived with a family, which had an electricity meter that worked with coins. When the meter ran short of money, the electricity would automatically stop. This was a technology that the family had chosen by their own free will without being imposed on them. I have not heard that an electricity provider even in the most underdeveloped countries would decide for the people when they should use their power.

While officials of the SEC asked us to delay our laundry and ironing from noon to evening, the Ministry of Labor has asked us to limit the daily working hours of the housemaids to eight so that they would finish their house chores and go to bed early. How can we harmonize between these two contradicting directives? Shall we postpone the laundry or the sleeping time of the housemaid?