Fahd Amer Al-Ahmadi Al-Riyadh We complain a lot, whether in the mass media or at social gatherings, about the lack of services, hospitals and crowded classrooms. Although this is true and is a reality, I have not heard anyone talking about our role as parents in creating this crisis. Nobody has spoken about our excessive rate of reproduction and our race against the wheel of development at full speed. When the “wheel of reproduction” overtakes the “wheel of development”, then mortality, poverty and unemployment rates increase and the housing crisis is further aggravated. However, when the birth rate slows down or is constant as it is in Europe, the wheel of development automatically moves toward the qualitative value, upgrading the standard of services, schools and hospitals. When the population is constant, the state is no longer in need of building schools and hospitals so efforts are directed toward raising the standard of health and education services to the extent that someday we will reach the rate of one teacher for every three students, the way it is in Japan and Germany. I am not trying to defend the government or the ministries concerned, but I demand that fathers and mothers shoulder their responsibilities. What does it mean when parents have a dozen children and then demand that others treat, educate and provide their children with jobs? Why do you expect others to care for your personal production when you do not accept the idea of spending on other people's children including education, training and healthcare? It is true that the government has a role to play in providing these services to the people, but notice that the governments of advanced countries, whose development and advancement we take as an example to be followed, collect taxes from the people in return for providing these services – taxes in France, Belgium, Denmark and Britain exceed 43 percent of per capita income! But we are still reproducing at such a high rate that it is difficult for any ministry to catch up with the growing population. The rate of birth rate in our country is not moving parallel to the wheel of development and is overshadowing every new accomplishment. If it was not for Allah blessing us with large oil resources, we would not have succeeded at all in dealing with the negative effects of our birth rate. During the past 40 years, the number of Saudi nationals increased threefold while populations have remained constant in advanced countries. According to the population census of 1974, the number of Saudi nationals stood at 6,218,361. Then it nearly doubled in 1992 reaching 12,310,053. Today our number has exceeded 22 million. Meanwhile, the rate of ignorance and illiteracy has decreased by 84 percent, the average age has risen to 75 years and the mortality rate among children has decreased to 15 out of every 1,000 births. This confirms that the development and oil resources have succeeded in increasing the average human lifespan and decreasing the mortality rate. Our population of 22 million is so young that nearly 28 percent of this number are children under 14 years of age. Sadly, those in the low income and less educated bracket are the ones that reproduce most and as a result are less capable of caring for their children. Despite all of this, I am not calling for “birth control” but for rationality.
