Al-Watan newspaper

IN the beginning of the current Hijri year, the Housing Ministry and the Real Estate Development Fund announced that they already achieved the objectives for 2017 by allocating more than 280,000 housing products and finances to Saudi families across the Kingdom.

Last month the Traffic Department reported a considerable decrease in deaths caused by road accidents in the country in the past two years. The ratio of road accident deaths for every 100,000 people dropped from 28 to 18.6, registering a 33 percent fall.

Last week, the Justice Ministry said its courts issued 4,482 alimony verdicts in the second quarter of this Hijri year, registering an increase of 61 percent compared to the same period last year. Meanwhile, the Saudi Electricity Company said it purchased 65 percent of its material requirements from local industries and production plants.

Other government departments and agencies have also reported similar gains to highlight their achievements by implementing strategic plans efficiently. Naturally, everybody will be happy to learn about those achievements because they contribute to the country’s overall development.

However, the question here is about the credibility of these claims and whether we can believe the development and performance indicators presented by the various government agencies.

The Housing Ministry says it has achieved its objectives for 2017 by allocating 280,000 housing products and financing facilities. But the question raised by most citizens is that whether there is any increase in the percentage of citizens’ ownership of homes. Moreover, the ministry has canceled 60 percent of agreements signed with beneficiaries of the land and loan program in Riyadh, Dammam, Jeddah and Madinah.

These people are now in the waiting list for obtaining real estate loans. In the backdrop of these incidents can we agree that the ministry has achieved its objectives for 2017?

With regard to the Justice Ministry’s claim, I would like to ask whether the ministry has succeeded in implementing the alimony verdicts it has issued within a reasonable time for the benefit for divorcees and their children? What happened to its projects for setting up specialized courts and documenting court rulings and verdicts? These are some of the main duties of the ministry.

Regarding the Saudi Electricity Company’s claim of raising local purchases, I would like to ask the SEC how it would explain the increase in deals and contracts with foreign companies.

When we closely analyze the achievement and performance figures released by government departments and agencies, we can clearly understand that they exaggerate the results and that the figures do not reflect the reality. In most cases they focus on the quantity of work at the expense of quality.

Some departments provide misleading reports, exploiting people’s ignorance of the facts and the absence of monitoring authorities. On many occasions supervising authorities do not make any analysis or comparison of reports to check whether the department has done justice to its projects and programs.

As a result of these negative trends we can see government agencies competing with one another by giving false figures and achievements and use these false reports to prove their development programs were successful. Some agencies used to claim they follow the best international standards and then we learn that the claims were false when check with records of international organizations.

Let us examine some of the methods followed by government departments and agencies to mislead the public and monitoring authorities. First, they change the basic year for comparisons to make the report look favorable. Sometimes they do not even mention the year if the comparison is problematic.

Agencies present the report in figures, without giving any indication of the quality of work and achievements. They also make selective reporting to hide failures in some programs and areas. Sometimes, they say the failure was due to the policy change.

They will also shamelessly exaggerate figures because of pressure from top officials who want to show that the agency or company is making progress, although the reality is to the contrary. They will also say the increase in profits was due to reforms adopted by the administration.

When reporting losses, government agencies would say: “Despite all efforts of the management we had to suffer some losses.” They will not go into details fearing it would give a bad impression about the agency’s overall performance. They will also use profits in some categories to cover losses in others.

In the end I would like to emphasize that the government should review the reporting system of departments and agencies to get a correct picture of their performance. The Performance Assessment Center and the General Auditing Bureau should review the performance indicators of companies and agencies carefully to make sure they are credible.

They should also make analytical studies on performance reports in light of the national transformation program and Vision 2030 in order to have a true picture of the performance of government departments and question the reasons for their failures.