JEDDAH — A number of people who are either blind or suffer from severe vision problems have complained about the struggle they go through to get services they need from Ebsar Foundation for the visually impaired. Speaking to Saudi Gazette, Abdul Fatah, a middle-aged accountant, said he has been following up his case with the foundation for many years now. Three years ago a doctor had informed him that his eyesight is at high risk and ever since he has been trying to get the foundation approve free surgery for him. He then contacted the foundation for a pair of special eyeglasses, which he cannot afford himself. However, the only response he received was they would contact him later because they had some administrative problems, Abdul Fatah said. Um Wael said the foundation had performed a corneal transplantation for her son, which helped him see again and he was able to obtain his bachelor's degree. However, as her son needed a follow-up operation, they have been contacting the foundation for more than a month but without success. This, she noted, put her son at great risk of losing his eyesight permanently. A Braille trainer at the foundation, Salim Badahman, said he did not get his salary for four months now. He explained that he worked for a company that cooperates with Ebsar, which has a history of delaying salaries but this time the payment was taking too long. He said they had been told the payment "will take some time due to internal issues." Saudi Gazette has learned that the foundation is undergoing administrative changes, which resulted in stopping the services provided to the disabled people and the anti-blindness project for conducting tests for children in schools to detect vision problems at an early stage. Mohammad Tawfiq Bello, secretary-general and spokesman of the foundation, confirmed that the halt in services is due to financial and administrative issues the foundation was going through. He said the problems were caused by the delay in receiving the financial aid from the Ministry of Social Affairs. The issues are also related to the contract with an operations company, which resulted in the delay in payment of salaries negatively affecting services provided by the foundation, Bello said. He added that they were working on a contingency plan to reduce the negative effects of the crisis. An urgent meeting to discuss the financial and administrative problems has been called. The Social Development Center in Jeddah, which is an arm of the Ministry of Social Affairs, has given the foundation a 30-day deadline to fix the financial and administrative problems or the board of the foundation will be disbanded. Since its inception in 2003, the foundation has served more than 8,000 patients with vision problems.
