Abdo Khal

Okaz

 

A LARGE number of our young men and women are frustrated. They have a number of problems irking them but nothing is being done to resolve their issues. A problem may start small in the beginning but it will soon snowball and become bigger if it is not contained in time.



There are various reasons for the girls escaping from their homes. These, among others, include family breakdowns as a result of the father becoming a drug addict or psychologically unstable.



The family disintegration may surface as a result of the absence of a role model, as the director of the Department of Social Affairs in Makkah has warned.



However, there are more complex reasons than these. The young men and women may be frustrated for economic reasons.



Life, as we all know, has become extremely expensive. The young people find themselves unable to satisfy their consumer needs so they start feeling the heat.



The young men and women may need to buy things but they cannot because they do not have enough money for this.



The things these young men and women want to purchase may seem to us futile and unimportant but to them they mean the world.



The satellite channels are replete with advertisements about various consumer goods and the latest cosmetic products. They are also full of talk shows in which the guests talk about human rights.



When a young girl watches these advertisements and listens to the talk about human rights, she will feel that she is being not only ignored but also oppressed.



She will also feel that she has been deprived of the good things in life. This will make her more determined to quit her family and go out in the hope that she will be able to secure her own needs.



When she talks to a friend of hers about her problems, though very small in our view, the friend will sympathize with her and convince her that she is facing a real problem. The friend will exaggerate the problem, making her more determined to leave her family.



Many escapee girls were caught and brought back to their families. This will not solve their problems but instead make them more frustrated. She may try to escape but again she will be caught and put into prison or placed in a social protection home.



A girl may seek help from people to cover for her during her escape. She may have to pay a price for this that may sometimes be her own body.



The issue of girls escaping is a social matter that should be dealt with not through temporary solutions but radical ones. Funds should be allocated to conduct research and studies to find radical solutions for this problem.



It would not be suffice to track down the escaping girls to return them to the families or lock them up in prisons or social protection homes.



These solutions are not only temporary but also shortsighted. The problem is much deeper than that. We have to find social, psychological and financial solutions for it.



These solutions will of course require funds. The Ministry of Social Affairs will not be willing to spend its budget on this problem, which is a trivial one compared to the other issues it is dealing with.



Therefore I suggest raising these funds by deducting a certain amount of money from the budgets of all parties concerned. These are the ministries of social affairs, education and health in addition to the Presidency of Youth Welfare, the department of prisons and the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Haia).



The collected funds may be used to finding a permanent solution to the problem instead of solving it in pieces or leaving it entirely on the shoulders of the Ministry of Social Affairs.