In a remote village nestled in the Laith region, 180 km southwest of Jeddah on the Red Sea, stand gloomy tiny wooden huts on a land where about a few families make up the small community. Situated on the valley area where flash flood can cause an eminent danger to dwellers, the huts offer no basic protection to the villagers' lives. “The hut is only a place to crash; they have no electricity, water, or individual toilets,” said villager Salem Al-Hayani. Villagers live in primitive conditions and mostly work in coal mining to make pennies a month, he said. They help each other build their huts through small collective loans, Saadi Al-Jahdli, a villager said. The huts are highly vulnerable to rain and wind, he said. Residents of the villages around the city of Laith live under the line of poverty, said Saad Al-Yazidi, from the Bani Yazid tribe. Most of them cannot find a meal for the day; and what they get from charity is not consistent, he said. Charity organizations do not know the locations of many poor villages in the region that need their help, “But housing tops their list of needs,” he said. King Abdullah, President of King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Foundation to His Parents for Developmental Housing, approved on Oct. 2002 a national policy of ongoing building of housing units for needy families across the nation. The foundation provided the needy families of Ghala village, just a few kilometers north of Laith city, with 168 housing units worth SR56 million in 2006. The foundation's emergency plan is to construct at least 2,200 housing units worth SR50 million in its first phase. – Okaz __
