Engineer Mohammed Abdel-Hamid Al-Muayta writes:
One of the reasons mentioned by the Minister of Municipalities for dissolving municipalities other than the rampant corruption affecting their work, is that the committees will control ongoing expenses, including salaries, with another goal being to utilize and train the huge number of employees in municipalities to remedy shortages in other departments instead of recruiting new staff. Karak municipality has an amusing story in this context, yet considering the level of corruption corroding the fabric of the nation, I see it as a mere picking of teeth. Despite this, if it had occurred in respected democratic countries, it would have resulted in governments being ousted, but here we are in a country where the corrupt are not held accountable for their corruption, nor those who breach the rule of law. When the state wishes to prosecute in an undesirable manner, it resulted in the dissolution of the Teachers' Syndicate, one charge being that they had donated a sum of money to the Himmat Watan fund during the Corona crisis. Had the wall collapsed after the recent low and I was in the municipality from that night, I would have been imprisoned under charges of professional negligence.
The story tells that Karak municipality received a foreign grant from the World Bank, with part of it allocated to set up a local radio station. After setting it up, we took all necessary steps for licensing. Since we work to control expenses and strive to gain any support from international organizations, we were able to appoint a team to manage it funded by one of the international organizations which had a project with the Ministry of Municipalities after several selections made by the organization, and they worked for three months under the organization's account, but due to circumstances faced by the organization, their work ceased, forcing the municipality to hire them as they became qualified to manage the radio station and they spent a long time training and working. The license was issued in the name of the radio station's director, but the ministry procrastinated and made excuses, and we asked them to accelerate the hiring on a service purchase system to benefit from the maintenance warranty of the equipment before the maintenance warranty expired, but all our requests went unanswered, a clear indication that the ministry’s intention from the outset was not to record any achievements for the elected councils and to hinder the municipality’s work and to credit this achievement to the appointed committees, and indeed, right after resolving the situation, the hiring was done, but the Almighty intended to disgrace them and unveil the falsity of their claims about the reasons for dissolving the municipalities. The attached documents reveal who is working to favor municipalities and reduce their expenses and who is concerned in the municipalities but to achieve personal benefits, thus disregarding the interests of the municipalities, the systems of municipalities, transparency, and justice, but rather with disregard for citizens' rights.
The wasteful council aimed to operate the radio with three employees at a salary of 1500 dinars monthly in a transparent way, thereby holding several courses for municipal employees to select the best. There was complete confidence that the municipal employees could continue the work with the radio team, but the managing committees as described by the ministry employed five employees at a salary of 2850 dinars monthly, and with a simple calculation of the significant difference between the salaries for this procedure and others, the Jordanian citizen can see the size of the debt caused by the committees to the municipalities. This is the reform in the view of the government.
Governments in which citizens are afflicted, and may God help us against their oppression.
And here are the documents
