The breakdown of Jeddah Municipality's central computer system has disrupted services at the municipality and its 14 branches and 26 service centers for the third consecutive week, incurring heavy losses to businesses and causing problems to individuals and organizations. Citizens and businessmen have urged the mayoralty to find a quick solution to the problem and resume various electronic services. Naif Al-Zahrani said he has been visiting the municipality for the past six months to partition his land. "I have visited the municipal office several times during the past months and the official in charge kept telling me that the application was still under process," he told Al-Madina Arabic daily. "Yesterday, I was surprised when the official told me that the system is down and all electronic transactions have been stopped. This will lead to accumulation of applications and I have to wait some more time to get my paperwork done," he explained. Abdullah Al-Tuwairi has another issue. He wanted to obtain permission for construction from an engineering company, which was unable to process the application due to the system breakdown at the municipality. "The permission is ready to be presented electronically," he said. Meanwhile, 26 municipal service centers across the city have stopped accepting applications due to malfunctioning of the computer system. Al-Madina visited a number of service centers and found that no people were around to submit their applications in order to obtain various services required by them, including issuance of licenses and permissions to carry out various activities. Municipal officials told Al-Madina that they have stopped providing electronic and paper-based services. They confirmed the stoppage has caused considerable losses to businesses as well as the municipality. According to a previous announcement, municipalities were supposed to work normally on Wednesday but an official at the service center in Hail Street said the system would operate only in a haphazard manner. Al-Madina tried to contact Omar Al-Humaidan, spokesman for the mayoralty to get his comment on the issue. He said repair work was progressing well to bring the system back to normal. He refused to give further details. Jeddah Mayor Dr. Hani Aburas said in a Twitter message on Dec. 1 that efforts are being made to repair the computer system to resume all electronic services shortly. But an informed source at the mayoralty told Al-Madina that it would take several weeks for the municipality to extend normal services to the public. The source did not give any reason for the computer breakdown.
