LONG gone are the days when an official could get away with bad treatment of a person, negligence at work and insulting people at any governmental department because now they are the ones squirming under the power of social media and cell phone video clips that beams their actions all over. In the past, many incidents would be brushed under the carpet and would end quietly even if government officials abused citizens. Not only would the ‘malish' (which means ‘It doesn't matter, please forget and forgive') word would be bandied about to settle the issue, but also the official would gain impudence simply because it was not publicized as social media did not exist at that time. This is not the case anymore. A small incident if recorded by cell phones and tweeted or uploaded on YouTube channels will reach millions of people within few hours. And when it goes viral, the official has no defense. It seems everyone has his own weapon inside his cell phone. There have been many incidents where officials have found themselves in deep trouble before authorities because their bad behavior or abuse of people was recorded and uploaded on Internet. And, unlike before, these officials have no cover and no defense. I recall two incidents that happened this month. The first one involved the head of the health department in Najran. The official, sitting behind his desk, was seen talking to two women over a transfer of her job from one region to another. The women demanded that he sign the papers of her transfer saying there is no justifiable reason for the delay. The two got into an argument that escalated until the official's outburst. He shouted at the two women and told them to get out of the office in a humiliating manner. The whole incident exploded in social media and there was a huge outcry and anger in Twitter, such that the minister of health himself tweeted that he was sorry for what happened and the incident would be investigated and action taken. Another incident involved the sacking of a senior official of Jeddah's King Fahd Hospital following a video clip of insects swarming in the hospital's convalescence center that went viral on social media. Again social media played an important role in highlighting the hygiene issue of the hospital. The fact that people are using their phone cameras to expose officials is continuing against teachers and police officers. Although the intention maybe good to expose officials' abusive actions or shed light on a certain problems, but it poses a major question on where does the freedom of taking video clips stop. If there is no law against this then we will head into a major issue and chaos. For without a semblance of control we will end up having little ‘paparazzi' everywhere. The taking of these clips is a sensitive issue, for taking photographs and video clips inside government department and facilities secretly and without permission is punishable by law. But, even before we go there, taking a video clip of photograph without permission is unethical and breaching codes of morality. It could be used against the person who took the clip as a case of defamation. Another question is, what if taking the photograph or the video clip to expose the wrongdoing was the last resort after all other means through normal channels failed to fix it? These are the eternal dilemma, which authorities need to solve and set parameters for the use of these clips. A classic case of a video clip taken and went wrong was of a citizen who was sentenced to pay SR30,000 in fine for defaming an officer while doing his work. In the clip, the man verbally abused the officer, who was doing his job by removing an illegal structure from government land. This clip was used against him in the court and he was found guilty and fined. In my opinion, there is a problem in the way officials and people interact. In each department I see a little box with ‘observations and complaints' written on it hung in a very noticeable area. People should use this box to complaint or suggest ways to improve things. Now either this little box is neglected totally by the departmental authorities or people do not want to use it. Either way, it is wrong to leave it as an ornament to gather dust. We should come up with a way to force both to use it. If people want to complain they must be made to drop it in the box and, we should also force the officials to take every complaint seriously and contact people over the phone to show their concern and seriousness in solving the problem. People would not be forced to use their cell phones to expose something if the officials were doing their job, in the first place. I ask a pertinent question here in the case of King Fahd Hospital issue. Why didn't people report the problem to the hospital management? If they had done that, then why didn't the hospital take necessary actions to solve the problem? What we need are officials who are serious when dealing with people. They should look at people as the camera that is recording their action and therefore officials will do their best to serve them. Officials should listen carefully to the voice of criticism and take them seriously. We do not want people to start taking video clips with their cell phones to record or talk about their problems. This way, we will find 10,000 video clips uploaded each day — some of them without perspective.
— The writer can be reached at [email protected]. Twitter: @anajeddawi_eng
