JEDDAH — A new campaign recently launched on YouTube and Twitter encourages people to post photos and locations of potholes around Jeddah, in the hopes that the municipality would take action. Libra Productions teamed up with Infrared Studios in a new project aimed at getting authorities to fix Jeddah's streets. The campaign was the brainchild of Wessam Kabli and Raef Sherbini from Libra Productions. One of them had two cars damaged and spent so much money in changing tires. “It's something that we are dealing with every day. They came to us with the idea and we thought we could do it right,” said Thamer Farhan from the same production house. The first video, which was released at the beginning of the week, opened with an introduction on Jeddah's heritage and how its residents are still trying to preserve the city. The video then talks about how the potholes are considered part of Jeddah's landmarks as these could be found on every street. The video shows a pothole in one of the main streets in the city, with a man measuring the hole with a meter. The video is 3:05 minutes long, showing three big potholes and five more at the end. Rowaid Sherbini, also from Libra Productions, said there would be at least three episodes. “In this campaign we are going to do it in different ways with each episode having a different theme,” he said. “As a production house we are an eye-opener. We cannot cover everything but what we can do is actually let people know about issues we know about and then they can take it from there. In the hashtag #7ofarna, everyone is posting their own pictures and this was the goal of the campaign where it could work as a database for the municipality in the future to find the pictures and locate the holes,” said Farhan. There has not been any response from the municipality since the video was posted. “We haven't contacted them after the video (was posted) but we have contacted them regarding fixing some potholes on the streets before,” said Farhan. “When we contact them, they usually say they are too busy and don't know the location of the holes but now they have it. They can simply go to the hashtag and find everything. I believe we are doing their job,” Farhan added. According to Farhan, the municipality's account on Twitter doesn't respond to people's complaints regarding potholes on the streets because they are busy focusing on the anti-smoking campaign. “When you go to their account you see that they only respond to the smoking tweets,” he said. However, Sherbini said that they are trying to take an official statement from the municipality regarding this campaign within this month or by January. Nidal Taha, also part of Libra Productions, said that they want to do things in a professional way. “We are posting the videos online and we are taking the response from people. Later on we want to take a direct approach and meet an official from the municipality. Whatever statement they give we will include in a video and the hashtag,” she said. The team is hoping for actions, not statements. “We hear statements every day all over the news. One thing we wanted to prove through the campaign is that people do have motivation — they can be involved in any campaign or good cause. They just need the ideas to be presented in the right way,” said Farhan. What may be more important than the cause itself is how to present it to the public, in order to reach people. “The municipality's campaign or any other governmental body is not being active because their campaigns could be too traditional and too old-fashioned. Also, their customer service is very poor so here we are trying to reach people in a new, creative way,” added Farhan. So far, the hashtag #7ofarna has more than 60 photos posted by different users from many locations. “We will show what people have put in the hashtag in the next episodes. We want to listen to the people. They feel they are part of the cause and they are interacting,” said Taha. At the end of the video, they showed the municipality's account on Twitter and the hotline to report potholes in streets, hoping to make more people aware of the account and maybe then an action could be taken.
