Dr. Qaiser Hamid Mutawie Al-Madinah The social media have displayed a video clip showing a Jawazat employee slapping a foreigner in the face, calling him bad names and hitting the other foreigners with his belt. This scene can only be described as inhumane and disgraceful to us Saudis. It is shameful that some foreigners are treated in this way in our country. The directives issued by the Interior Minister to interrogate the official is enough proof that the Saudis, both government and people, will not accept seeing any foreigner being humiliated on our land. What the Jawazat official had done, though shocking to a large number of us, was a natural result of the arrogant way some government employees deal with people, whether citizens or expatriates, when it comes to paperwork. Many government employees seem to forget that they have been employed to serve citizens and expatriates for a monthly payment. They incorrectly believe that they own the offices they work in. They consider these offices to be their own private homes instead of public places from which they should serve people. Many government employees deal with people coming to their departments to complete their paperwork with recklessness and indifference. The employees come to their offices late and lay down the table to take their breakfast without heeding their customers. When these government officials are gracious enough to receive the customers, they deal with them, without any exaggeration, as beggars knocking on their house doors to ask for charity. Some of the officials, who are nice enough and polite, will ask the customers to come back the next day while others will throw the files in their faces and kick them out of the office. When the call for Dhuhr (noon) prayer is made, you will be very lucky to find any government employee in his office because they will go out to pick up their children from schools. You will have to wait until they return to their offices, if at all. If you give your paperwork to the government employee when he comes back to his office, he will look at you with contempt because it is uncouth to visit anyone around 2 p.m. When foreigners go to a government office to finish their paperwork, the employee will deal with them the same way he treats his private drivers or housemaids. It is quite normal for the government employees to yell at the foreigners. The officers may even beat them with their belts because they consider all foreigners as their domestic workers and they wanted to teach them good manners because they dared to annoy him at the time of their rest. If the government employee is nice with the foreigners he is in fact being sarcastic with them. The poor foreigner will smile in appreciation of this noble gesture when in fact he is burning inside. It is regretful that some government employees deal with customers with arrogance and superiority. Therefore, it is important that the government organizes training sessions in etiquette for its employees to improve the way they deal with the people and to enhance their performance. Those who maltreat customers should be severely punished. It is true that they are loyal government employees who are nice to the customers but we should not deny that there are many government employees who will not hesitate to kick the customers in their backs with their boots.
