Saudi Gazette report HAIL — The Control and Investigation Board (CIB) has called on administrative courts in the Kingdom to hand down harsher sentences to officials in the Ministry of Education who are found guilty of corruption. The CIB's call came following a prison sentence issued by an administrative court in Hail in a case involving nine senior officials in the region's education administration, who were found guilty of embezzlement and corruption. The court sentenced the nine officials and their accomplices, seven of them Saudis, to a total of 34 years in prison and fines worth SR700,000. It also ordered them to return SR7 million they embezzled from the government, Al-Watan daily reported. The CIB considered the verdict very light and called for harsher sentences. In another development, two women working for the Hail education administration filed a complaint with the administrative court against the region's former education director who dismissed them from their jobs without any legal justification. Both women were in charge of one of the Hail supervision offices. They said an official can only be dismissed for under-performance or serious misconduct. Khaled Al-Anqari, Minister of Higher Education, has asked some universities, which were reported to have hired expatriate academic staff instead of Saudis, to justify their action to the Bureau of Public Control. The bureau discovered that some universities gave priority to employing expatriates over Saudis. Most of the Saudi job seekers had studied abroad and had graduated from reputable Western universities. At least 24 Saudi job seekers were rejected by a number of universities while expatriate teachers filled the vacancies. In its report to the minister, the bureau said the universities did not mention why they did not hire the Saudis despite the fact that an increasing number of Saudis who have returned home after completing higher studies abroad remain unemployed. In an earlier case, a Saudi citizen filed a complaint with the National Anti-Corruption Commission against the director of education in Al-Hoota, 180 km south of Riyadh, for procrastinating in providing his wife, a teacher, the required clearance after her transfer from the region. The citizen said his wife and another teacher were transferred to Riyadh and when she requested the required clearance to join her new school, the director refused saying there was no substitute for her. After two months of procrastination, the approval was finally given for her transfer, but the citizen filed a complaint saying the action of the director constituted an administrative breach and he needs to be punished.
