A few kilometres from the blinged-out shopping malls of Saudi Arabia's capital, Souad
al-Shamir lives in a concrete house on a trash-strewn alley. She has no
job, no money, five children under 14 and an unemployed husband who is
laid up with chronic heart problems.
"We are at the bottom," she
said, sobbing hard behind a black veil that left only her eyes visible.
"My kids are crying and I can't provide for them."
Millions of
Saudis struggle on the fringes of one of the world's most powerful
economies, where jobs and welfare programmes have failed to keep pace
with a population that has soared from 6 million in 1970 to 28 million
today.
Under King
Abdullah, the Saudi government has spent billions to help the
growing numbers of poor, estimated to be as much as a quarter of the
native Saudi population. But critics complain that those programmes are
inadequate, and that some royals seem more concerned with the country's
image than with helping the needy. In 2011, for example, three Saudi
video bloggers were jailed for two weeks after they made an online film
about poverty in Saudi Arabia.
"The
state hides the poor very well," said Rosie Bsheer, a Saudi scholar who
has written extensively on development and poverty. "The elite don't see
the suffering of the poor. People are hungry."
The Saudi
government discloses little official data about its poorest citizens.
But press reports and private estimates suggest that between 2 million
and 4 million of the country's native Saudis live on less than about
$530 a month – about $17 a day – considered the poverty line in Saudi
Arabia.
The kingdom has a two-tier economy made up of about 16
million Saudis, with most of the rest foreign workers. The poverty rate
among Saudis continues to rise as youth unemployment skyrockets. More
than two-thirds of Saudis are under 30, and nearly three-quarters of all
unemployed Saudis are in their 20s, according to government statistics.
In
just seven decades as a nation, Saudi Arabia has grown from an
impoverished backwater of desert nomads to an economic powerhouse with
an oil industry that brought in $300bn last year.
Forbes magazine
estimates King Abdullah's personal fortune at $18bn, making him the
world's third-richest royal, behind the rulers of Thailand and Brunei.
He has spent government funds freely on high-profile projects, most
recently a nearly $70bn plan to build four "economic cities", where
government literature says "up to 5 million residents will live, work
and play".
The king last year also announced plans to spend $37bn
on housing, wage increases, unemployment benefits and other programmes,
which was widely seen as an effort to placate middle-class Saudis and
head off any Arab Spring-style discontent. Abdullah and many of the
royals are also famous for their extensive charitable giving.
For
many years, image-conscious Saudi officials denied the existence of
poverty. It was a taboo subject avoided by state-run media until 2002,
when Abdullah, then the crown prince, visited a Riyadh slum.
News coverage was the first time many Saudis saw poverty in their
country.
Prince Sultan bin Salman, a son of Crown Prince Salman,
said in an interview that the government has acknowledged the existence
of poverty and is working to "meet its obligations to its own people".
Prince
Sultan said the Saudi government was "three to five years" away from
dramatically reducing poverty through economic development,
micro-lending, job training and creation of new jobs for the poor.
The
Saudi government spends several billion dollars each year to provide
free education and health care to all citizens, as well as a variety of
social welfare programmes – even free burials. The government also
provides pensions, monthly benefits and payments for food and utility
bills to the poor, elderly, disabled, orphans and workers who are
injured on the job.
Much of the welfare spending comes from the
Islamic system of zakat, a religious requirement that individuals and
corporations donate to charity 2.5% of their wealth; the money is paid
to the government and distributed to the needy.
"Living in Saudi
Arabia is like living in a charitable foundation; it is part and parcel
of the way we're made up," Prince Sultan said. "If you are not
charitable, you are not a Muslim."
Despite those efforts, poverty
and anger over corruption continue to grow. Vast sums of money end up in
the pockets of the royal family through a web of nepotism, corruption
and cozy government contracts, according to Saudi and US analysts.Bsheer
said some Saudi royals enrich themselves through corrupt schemes, such
as confiscating land from often-poor private owners, then selling it to
the government at exorbitant prices.
At the other end of the
spectrum, many of the poorest Saudis are in families headed by women
such as Shamir, who are either widowed, divorced or have a husband who
cannot work. Under Islamic law, men are required to financially support
women and their children. So women who find themselves without a man's
income struggle, especially because the kingdom's strict religious and
cultural constraints make it hard for women to find jobs.
The
situation for many families, including Shamir's, is worse because they
are "stateless" and not officially recognised as Saudi citizens, even
though they were born in the country.
The UN estimates that there
are 70,000 stateless people in Saudi Arabia, most of them descended from
nomadic tribes whose traditional territory included parts of several
countries. Their legal limbo makes it harder for them to receive
government benefits.
Shamir, 35, lives in the shadow of a huge
cement factory. The houses and streets are covered in a haze of smoke
and dust. Her concrete house is down a narrow alley, where graffiti
covers the cracked walls and litter piles up in the street. Her landlord
is threatening to kick her out, and a local shop owner has cut off her
credit for food and gas for her stove. She lives mainly on charity from
wealthy Saudis who show up with food and clothes.
One recent
morning, her children ran to the door to help unload food being dropped
off by a middle-class Riyadh couple in an SUV. Shamir said donations
help her pay for the electricity to run an air conditioner, but she does
not have enough to buy school supplies for her children.
While
middle-class Saudi youths have all the latest gadgets, Shamir's
14-year-old daughter, Norah, has never sent an email or seen Facebook.
Her husband has a second wife who has another 10 children. Most of them
are unemployed.
Shamir said her husband earned about $500 a month
as a security guard until his health forced him to quit five years ago.
She said she has tried in vain to find work as a seamstress or a
cleaner.
"I've been patient all these years," Shamir said. "I hope
that God will reward me with a better life for my children."
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