Two recent incidents have sparked a public debate, yet again, on whether the act of filming officials secretly while at work or abusing their positions is ethical or not. In the debate, the fact that the act is done in stealth is the only arguing point against secretly filming officials to reveal their wrongdoing, while many others believe that the act is justifiable.
The two incidents showed officials acting high-handedly when citizens were merely seeking answers to their questions. In the first incident, an official in the education department was filmed kicking a parent out of his office after verbally abusing him. The clip, which was widely circulated on social media and YouTube, showed the official shouting at the parent, before virtually kicking him out of his office. As a result, the Education Ministry fired the education official in the Northern Borders area for his arrogant behavior.
The second incident happened in Taif where a municipal official ended up in a verbal spat with a citizen over a permit, or to be precise the non-existence of one. The man was seeking answers from the official as to why his rebuilding permit had been delayed for more than two years. The clip that went viral on social media showed the municipal official getting up from his desk and walking toward the man to escort him out of his office, while their spat escalated.
In both cases, the officials showed aggressive behavior toward people and instead of doing their duty by serving citizens deciding to kick them out without resolving the issue at hand. I am not going to defend these government officials because they had no business in behaving in this way. They were hired to serve citizens and were asked to be patient with people and deal with them properly and to display good manners.
The debate was on how far people should go in taking video clips of officials at work. I remember writing an article two months ago about the power of social media and the question of when the freedom of taking video clips without permission should stop. It seems like people are resorting to filming officials secretly using high-tech devices because their voices are still not being heard through normal channels.
I remember writing in my previous article on the same subject that complaint boxes should be set up with officials taking complaints seriously and acting on them swiftly. If this were done, then there is every possibility that people would give officials time to perform without the need to attempt to film them.
But even this simple suggestion has fallen on deaf ears. I sometimes even question whether government officials are actually trained in the way to deal with the public. I doubt that they are, because I have seen many cases of government workers from various departments losing their temper over a small issue. They lose control and shout at people, sometimes even threatening that they will see to it that individuals will not be served or have their issues resolved.
If officials were trained in etiquette and in dealing with people, then the rising number of cases of aggressive behavior on the part of government employees would not have happened. I would suggest that government departments should get their money back because they are not getting value from their employees.
It is sad that the general attitude now is that if a person wants to get what is due to him or to have his voice heard, then he/she needs to make the case public. Take a video clip of an official when he commits a crime and circulate it to expose him and his department. In this process we are only exposing our dirty laundry in public more and more.
According to many lawyers, it is against the law to video record a person without his/her permission. It is punishable by a year in prison or SR500,000 in fine, or both.
I would agree with the law or punishment if the system to complain were actually implemented. The level of irresponsible official behavior in which a person has to chase a building permit for two years without getting an answer is simply not acceptable. I am not going to blame this person for doing what he did because it was the last hope for him to make his case public, and he was also kicked out of the office by the official. The average man would love to ask these lawyers and top managers what they should do when there is nowhere to go. People see this as their only weapon.
This problem should be solved quickly and officials need to act to change the perception that people have that government officials are there only as obstacles and not as public servants who are ready to help.
I would suggest that all government workers dealing with the public should be trained in the private sector, especially in customer service departments. Such officials think that it is permissible to behave in their office the same way that they behave at home or to deal with people in any way that they see fit. They should be the first ones to receive this training. They should learn how to keep their cool and temper and have a continuous smile on their face when talking to people. At the end of the day when they are applying rules and regulations, they should not lose their temper or resort to shouting and kicking people out of their office. Let us be realistic here, in such cases videotaping the incident is the only way to reveal the aggressive and errant behavior of officials. It would be unrealistic to ask permission of the abusive official to videotape his bad behavior. Until government officials are able to behave correctly, members of the public should be allowed to record them using a secret camera. That is the least that can be done to expose a bad official.
The writer can be reached at [email protected] Twitter: @anajeddawi_eng
