JEDDAH: The Pakistani consulate in Jeddah has taken “swift measures” to put an end to the long-running rumors that the Saudi government is offering “financial aid grants” to the Pakistani community in the Kingdom, Al-Watan Arabic daily reported Sunday. Muhammad Tariq, Press Consular, told Al-Watan that claims by members of the Pakistani community in Jeddah that they first heard of the grants on a “Pakistani radio station in Islamabad” were false. “I immediately contacted the radio station manager personally and he denied all knowledge of any such information and said the station had not broadcast any news of that nature,” Tariq said. He said that the consulate in Jeddah had been inundated with persons calling to check the veracity of the rumors and that he had been obliged to inform them that there was no truth in them whatsoever. The official statement from the consulate describes the rumors as a “media fabrication” which, according to Tariq, is meant to signify “Pakistanis falling for the rumor which has spread over the last two months in several cities in the Kingdom”. “The Kingdom's position has always been praiseworthy and brotherly in the various crises that Pakistan and its people have experienced,” he said. “Some people have sought to abuse those fine sentiments.” The rumor, which first emerged around three months ago, claimed that the Emir's Office in Makkah was offering cash payouts to Pakistanis who suffered damage or loss during the Jeddah flood disaster of late 2009. Despite the Emirate issuing a denial, tens of thousands of Pakistanis in Jeddah and earlier this month in Madina responded by contacting it to stake their claims. With the rumor requiring claimants to respond by telegram, however, not everyone was a loser. Post offices across Madina brought returns of over SR1 million in telegram operations, and a similar situation in Jeddah one month earlier earned post offices half a million riyals in two days, despite denouncements of the rumor by the Post Office itself. A black market also sprung up outside post offices, providing ready-written telegrams in both Urdu and Arabic at SR30 a time. Post Office officials noted with resignation that regulations oblige staff to comply with legal customer requests. “We tried to get people to understand that the rumors were false,” Saudi Gazette reported one Post Office worker as saying at the time. “We even brought in a translator to speak to them in Urdu, but they still continued to prefer to try their luck.”
