Kuwait Municipality, MOE, and the rest of us

Everyone's noticed how the landscape in Downtown Kuwait has changed over the last year or so. New, high-rise office buildings, new hotels, Kuwait Business Town, Arraya's expansion, etc...all towards building a true financial district. This happens, of course, without preparing the emergency services (Fire Brigade, Ambulance, etc) with the proper equipment, like long ladder trucks! Confusing, isn't it??

On the other hand, notice how the "Tarsheed" campaign is gaining momentum, with all the phone calls, fliers, newspaper, TV & Radio ads, even road-side billboards, the whole 9 yards? Just drive around Kuwait City some time on an evening, and see all those high-rise buildings within the financial district, spending all that electricity in their empty office buildings. What I'd like to know is, how come no one is bothering with calling up the owners and asking them to switch off those lights?! More to the point, why doesn't the Municipality consider these running lights as a municipal offense and invoke a penalty on the offenders? The money could easily go to useful projects (or gets funneled through to the corrupted, either way, it's a pain on the offender!). At the very least, it would create some level of corporate responsibility which may, in some way, transcend down to the masses form the top dogs..

And another thing; With all these gigantic malls and high-rise buildings coming up, the Ministry of Electricity is not allowing any of them to be connected to the national grid until November of this year, due to the power shortage. This means, if an owner or a company has completed an office building, and is looking to rent out profitable office space, he/they won't be able to do anything with their ready property for the next 3 months....way to go City planners...bunch of losers!!