A young man visiting the Passports Department recently to pass the sponsorship of a family driver over to his elderly mother was surprised to be told by an official that she had an outstanding traffic offense registered in her name. The man, believing the information to be some form of bureaucrat's in-joke, found on attempting to proceed with his business that an outstanding fine of SR150 had, in fact, been registered in his mother's name to an out-of-date license in the town of Sabya, and saw himself obliged to pay the sum in order to continue with the sponsorship transfer. As is only natural in the Kingdom, his mother, he noted, had never driven a car let alone held a driving license and, to boot, had never been to the town of Sabya. The Traffic Department has admitted on previous occasions to having registered traffic violations to the names of female nationals and foreign housemaids due to “unintentional mistakes when entering information into the computer.”
