RIYADH — The Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing has started slapping fines on owners of commercial establishments that do not adhere to displaying the sticker titled "Your opinion makes a difference" in front of their facility. The ministry had set Aug. 31 as the deadline to start monitoring violations and imposing fines against owners of commercial establishments with an amount of SR500 for the violation. The ministry had launched the Quick Response Code (QR code) service through this sticker, which requires its display on the front of the establishments. The ministry underlined the importance of the establishments' compliance with displaying the sticker, carrying the QR code, saying that the service allows the owners of commercial establishments to update the data of their establishments, and add much attractive and useful information for customers. It also allows them to have feedback about the customer satisfaction with the services provided through enabling customers to evaluate the quality of services by scanning the QR code. This contributes to achieving effective communication with customers and improving the quality of services provided. Meanwhile, there are complaints that some e-commerce sites have started exploiting the new regulation by charging SR40 per store for preparing such a sticker. Khaled Al-Fahmi, a retailer, said that he was surprised by a text message in which a person offered the sticker for SR40. "I do not know whether they make available of the sticker or what are the procedures to follow but I only know how to communicate with the advertiser on the site and pay SR40 after printing it." Abdul Karim Al-Shehri, another owner of commercial establishment, said that there has been a surge in violations in the name of the sticker by charging a fee without providing information regarding the rest of the procedures and their validity and such other details. In a related development, many users of social media platforms demanded the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing to compel the mayoralties to have such a sticker so as to enable the public to evaluate their performance and quality of services provided by them. Ali Al-Qahtani, one of the social media users, stressed that the step would reveal many shortcomings in the performance and work of the mayoralties, especially in neighborhoods that witness deficiencies in asphalting, lighting and hygiene. As for Muhammad Al-Ghamdi, another netizen, he said that the mayoralties should have such a mechanism so that people can articulate their grievances with regard to municipal facilities and services such as poor asphalting, leakage of ground water, lack of drainage networks, poor sanitation and the like.
