In an article last Sunday, I talked about the effort and money I spent over four years to convince the Ministry of Electricity of the necessity of installing electricity meters for the plots of an entire area in Sabhan, because power was being used free of charge illegally over the years.

In the article, I mentioned the names of the former and current undersecretaries of the ministry, and how they failed to help me stop this waste, and I had to turn to the current Minister of Electricity, Dr. Al-Otaibi, for his help, and Al-Roumi, the Minister of Justice, and the support of Eng Khaled Khater from the Public Authority for Industry to end this unjustified waste, and the hardship and money it cost in doing so.

I was shocked on the same day when I received a set of text messages from the former Undersecretary of the Ministry of Electricity, Mohammad Bushehri, that he was accusing me in one of them that I had praised in my article corrupt people.

I will not defend the people of corruption. It is clear who he means, and the texts of his messages are preserved with me, and in my view they are honorable enough because they succeeded in performing an act that he failed to accomplish over a period of nearly three years. So who is the corrupt one?

He also accused me of getting what I wanted, and this is a ridiculous joke. The opposite is true. Where is my personal benefit and the whole thing is related to the theft of state funds. Is my insistence for four years, with the testimony of the Ministers of Electricity and Justice, the PAI Director-General, and senior officials of the Ministry of Electricity to stop waste is in my personal interest or in the interest of the state, let alone the money and effort it cost me?

To make matters worse, he accused me of having narrow interests, claiming patriotism, and I leave the judgment to the reader to witness who is the patriot. Was he the one who failed for three years, while he was at the head of the Ministry of Electricity to stop the theft of state funds, or the one who made the effort and paid the money to stop the waste and theft?

Brother Bushehri ended his messages by saying that the honorable people are witness to his honor, and I share the opinion that he is an ‘honorable person’ who did not ‘embezzle’ public money, but he did not pay close attention to what I mentioned in my article that the concept of honor does not mean only clean hand from the hygienic point of view, but also the lack of inaction to stop waste of public money, and this is where he failed.

As for the only thing that the undersecretary and the former minister was honest in his angry messages to me when he accused me of foolishness, and I admit that, because of my insistence of stopping the theft of state funds, and my payment of tens of thousands of dinars to stop this waste, and I did so because he and his ilk are among the non-idiot senior state officials who failed in their work.

Note: Despite all of Bushehri’s false accusations, I still have some respect left for him, and I do not want to see him in this ridiculous position.

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By Ahmad alsarraf