An American in Jordan

The price to park at Queen Alia International Airport just tripled over the last month. The charge for parking (if I recall correctly) used to be thirty piasters per half hour. But the new charge is one dinar for every hour or increment of an hour.

So you want to park for five minutes? One dinar. Fifty-five minutes? One dinar. One hour and five minutes? Cha-ching, two dinars.

As far as I can tell, none of the parking services have improved. There’s the same lackluster security monitoring ignoring the parking lots. And there’s still the overcrowding and the double parking. So in essence, it’s the same crappy experience, only now we get to pay triple the price for it.

Two articles from the front page of today’s Jordan Times:

King orders contingency plan to rein in price hikes

His Majesty King Abdullah has ordered the government to take immediate measures to curb the surge in prices of essential commodities and alleviate the economic hardships citizens are going through.

The contingency plan should be implemented within the coming few days to include immediate measures whose outcome should be felt by citizens, who are entitled to a “secure and stable life”, the King was quoted as saying.

His Majesty, while on the European tour, was following up on the pressing issue of the cost of living, which rocketed as a result of a government decision to liberalize fuel prices, coupled with soaring prices of essential commodities in international markets, the news website said.

Fuel prices up

Technical teams were Thursday night adjusting gas stations’ meters to an updated list of fuel prices, which included a rise in unleaded gas 90 and 95 prices by 5.1 and 5.2 per cent, respectively.

According to the updated price list, the unleaded 90 type is now sold for 615 fils a litre, up from 585 fils, and unleaded 95 is 700 fils. Diesel and kerosene prices remained at their March price of 660 fils per litre.

The Philippine government has decided to resume sending Filipino domestic helpers to the Kingdom, ending a two-month ban enacted following allegations of abuse.

The decision was made on the condition that domestic helpers’ monthly salaries are raised from $150 to $400, and that the embassy’s approval is required on all work contracts.

The Philippine government had decided to temporarily stop sending female workers to Jordan after some 260 Filipino domestic helpers sought refuge at their embassy, alleging abuse at the hands of their employers.

Domestic helpers have previously not fallen under the Labor Law’s jurisdiction and the recent allegations have forced the government to reorganize the process of hiring and recruiting this category of foreign workers, according to ministry regulations.

So I think the 2008 Filipino slave house help catalogue should be hot off the press any day now.

Source: The Jordan Times, April 6, 2008

The Jordan Times is reporting that Jordan’s Internet prices are among the highest in the region due to the imposed 16 percent sales tax. In fact, Jordan ranks second only to Morocco, which applies a 20 percent sales tax on Internet.

According to the article…

The National ICT Strategy, launched in July 2007, seeks to increase the number of people who use the Internet up to 50 per cent from the current 11 per cent.

To realise this objective, there is a need to reduce Internet service prices and sales tax down to 5 per cent, the [Information and Communications Technology Minister Bassem Roussan] stressed.

So while (and if) the goverment gets around to slashing the sales tax, Internet service providers also need to boost the speeds (I have never, ever received the advertised 2MB/s!) and remove download caps. I’d say it’s about time to move Jordan’s Internet services into the 21st century. And I’m talking to you, Orange!

When I read the article in the Jordan Times on March 24 entitled Drive to fight smoking in public places awaits funding, I was a bit incredulous. After all, with all the civil servants hanging around in this city, you’d think that writing a ticket for someone smoking in a hospital waiting room would be a pretty simple thing. Paper, pen, two minutes: that’s all it takes. (Actually, I believe the police are too busy trying to keep me from taking pictures to enforce actual laws, but I digress.)

The “No Smoking” signs are already in place. The law is already in place. Why do we need funding for campaigns when the most effective campaign is word of mouth? Just start enforcing the law and it should take care of itself.

Apparently I’m not the only one who views this issue with absurdity. I was pleased to read the following opinion in today’s Jordan Times:

I was amazed to read the article “Drive to fight smoking in public places awaits funding” (The Jordan Times, March 24, 2008) and I am still trying to make some sense out it.

Let me see if I got this right. There is a Public Health Law in place (we know it exists), there are articles in the law banning smoking in public places (we know that too), yet we are seeking some $300,000 in funding (apparently we somehow qualified for that) from the Bloomberg Global Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, to finance a campaign to raise public awareness, and we have a national committee to do all that for us?

Am I the only one missing the point here? Have we, in Jordan, perfected the art of seeking funds, grants or loans to the extent that we easily convince donors to fund useless campaigns that simply absolve some of our officials of their lax attitudes in implementing laws?

If we can hold doctors and nurses in our public health services accountable for dereliction of duty or negligence, why can’t we hold public servants in the relevant government department accountable for not implementing our Public Health Law, which is in effect a dereliction of duty?

It is certainly not the public’s awareness that needs to be raised here; it is the awareness of the officials entrusted with enforcing our Public Health Law to the letter, and for that we do not need any funding.

If anything, I think that the department responsible for enforcing the Public Health Law should be penalised for negligence and complacency and asked to contribute $300,000 to the Bloomberg Global Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use instead.

And just in case we have hordes of public servants sitting around all day doing nothing but dreaming up ways of securing funding for wasteful campaigns and projects, I have heard that an international fund is seeking qualification applications to fund public awareness against spitting in the streets and tossing garbage out of cars while driving and turning over garbage containers in front of residential buildings. I suppose we can easily get qualified for at least a million dollar grant for that.

Vatche Dakessian,
Amman