Yagoob’s Dome

Half a year has passed, and more than half of Bahrain’s families (who earn less than 1500 dinars) have not received the inflation fund, ooh and I forgot the rest of the people who signed up for the fund (up to 27,000 families).

I find it despicable that Bahrainis’ emotions and financial needs are toyed in such a way, from the publication of full names in the newspaper, publishing lists and scrapping them with ‘newer’ lists, opening registration centres where the poor and old were dragged to ‘beg’ this fund, and all for what??

a small sum of 600 dinars spread out over 12 months…

But really whose fault is it with this mess??

Is it the MPs where many of them gained their work experience through working in Islamic charities and thinking that the whole of Bahrain are one big charity case and a one way ticket to Heaven?

Couldn’t they have used it better by encouraging small food industries in the country or even funding awareness campaigns on how to spend wisely or add the 50 dinars to the salaries of hard-working Bahrainis, both as a way to combat inflation and an incentive to produce and work harder?

Or is it the CIO and Ministry of Social Development whose kneejerk reaction was to publish people’s names and running around in circles like headless chickens to find who does and does not ‘deserve’ the fund?? and then saying “OOPS! We’re overbudget people!”

Now I’m no expert in Database systems, but wouldn’t you think that if you had all the information about the people living in this tiny country where the Bahraini citizens only count for nearly half a million and they were all in one place, I think a small time programmer could of figured out a way to write a query asking “married people whose joint income is <1500 dinars”

The big headline in today’s newspaper was that the government has added an additional 30.5 million BD on top of the original 40 million BD, nearly doubling the original budget for the fund.

Hopefully this will end this ‘crisis’ and puts a smile on many Bahrainis, but what really shocked and saddened me is that so many families (nearly 50,000) have an income of less than 1,500 BD..

So why did the Inflation Fund cross the road?

To give us a bloody wake up call of what we’ve become as a nation!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Bahrainian Stuff, Newspapers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.