Frustrated council members prepared to quit

Riyadh: Several elected members of the Riyadh Municipal Council, who failed to fulfil the promises given to their voters, voiced their frustration and willingness to resign from the council.

"The council virtually possesses no real powers to execute any decisions," they complained. In an open meeting with their voters held in south Riyadh on Friday, the members shared their frustration and disappointment with those who elected them to the council.

Abdullah Al Suwailem, one of the members, said that he plans to tender his resignation from the council shortly.

"The election process and [our commitment to voters] is more important for us than holding this [ceremonial] post. We have to cope with the [hopeless] state of affairs at the council.

"We presented several proposals and tried our best to solve the problems of our people and address their concerns. However, we did not see any positive reaction from most of the concerned agencies," he said while asking the voters to excuse them as they failed to fulfil promises given during the election campaign.

"The matter is beyond our powers. We have only limited powers. And we have no tricks to play," he said.

He also expressed unhappiness over the functioning of municipality branches in tackling problems of citizens.

Only discussions

"They are also facing myriad problems and desperately need the government's support to tackle them. I wonder whether the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs had done anything to improve the lot of municipality branches in the capital city," he asked.

According to Al Suwailem, the members of the Municipal Council are striving hard to address the grievances of their voters. "We presented several proposals to the council. But our efforts to put them into practice ended in failure because the council lacks executive powers for doing many things," he said.

On his part, Dr Misfar Al Bavaridi, another member, underlined the need for removing all obstacles that stand in the way of interaction between officials and the citizens.

Addressing the open discussion, Dr Ebrahim Al Quwaid, member of the council and head of the committee for interaction with the public at the council, said the members of the council are yet to begin their actual work even though they have held about 20 meetings. "Most of these sessions focused on discussing organisational matters of the council," he said.

"After that the members started interacting with the citizens through receiving their complaints and proposals at branches of municipalities every Tuesday.

"They also started meeting citizens at designated places every month," he said. Dr Sulaiman Al Rashoudi, another member, said the council has passed its experimental phase.

"It is quite natural to have some lapses and failures as beginners. We will correct these mistakes and improve the performance," he added.