ONE feels deeply frustrated and sad when he sees beautiful cities, not in the rich Western countries, but in some poor Arab countries whose financial potentials could not be compared to those of the Kingdom. Despite their poverty, you will find that the cities in these poor countries have built their basic infrastructure long ago. You will never hear about unending crises or seasonal disasters like what we in the Kingdom suffer from. Half a century has passed since huge amounts of money started pouring into our treasury. It was true that there were some fluctuations and bad times when the income was not so big but this was not a serious condition and did not last long. Most of the time, however, the money we used to have in our treasury was quite sufficient to build a strong basic infrastructure and to provide consummate services including a network of roads, public transport systems, water and sewage networks, high-quality healthcare institutions and others. The crucial question here is: why has this not happened? Why have we not built strong basic infrastructure projects at least in the big towns and cities that constituted the Kingdom's facade? We have been listening for years to officials in some ministries and municipalities talking about the basic infrastructure but we have not seen any of it with our own eyes. It was as if these officials were talking about something that only them could see but not the others who they take for being totally blind. What we see clearly now and live through is a miserable condition everywhere as if we were a newly established country which did not have one of the largest revenues in the world, considering its small population and few big cities. It is shameful that we still see bad roads and sewage trucks that do not only diffuse bad smell but also contaminate the streets. We also see water tankers parked near houses to supply them with desalinated water because their taps are not connected to the central water network. It is quite saddening to see the roads that were asphalted yesterday having deep ditches and holes today. It was as if that the asphalt layer was not more than thin paper. It is not understandable that we began to think of public transport projects only recently and after a long time. It seems to me that these projects, if at all implemented, will only be in more than a city or two. When will this happen, nobody knows. Time passes on. Officials replace each other. We hear about huge budgets but the basic development is going very slowly at an illogical pace. There is no explanation for this weird situation. When and how are we going to liberate our cities and towns from their miserable condition and backwardness, instead of talking about the faltering projects? When can we hold accountable those who have formulated the plans but did not implement them? When can we try those who have supervised mega development projects only to discover at the end of the day that they were fake schemes? When can we salvage our country from this shameful catastrophe?
