Thiruvananthapuram: Sunday night’s tweets by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE Vice President and Prime Minister, on duties of good officials, have gone viral in view of the controversy over the Centre cold-shouldering the UAE aid offer for flood-ravaged Kerala.
Although the tweets had no direct references to Kerala, social media has been abuzz with a cross-section of opinions, linking them to the unprecedented natural calamity and aid responses.
“There are two types of officials… The first type are the keys of goodness… They like to serve people. Their happiness in facilitating human life... and their value in what they give and their real achievement is changing life for the better. They open doors, they offer solutions, and they always seek to benefit people”, Sheikh Mohammed tweeted.
In a second tweet, he described the second type, “For good… difficult to easy… And they underestimate a lot. They suggest actions that make human life more difficult. Their happiness is that people need them and stand by their doors and their desks.
“States and Governments succeed only if the first type increases on the second.”The tweet on the empathetic and problem solvers, strikes a chord in minds of millions of people, not just the Malayali Diaspora, who share the universal grief over the devastation and the need for offering salve to the nearly one million people in relief camps and others confined to partially submerged homes.
The second type represents the bureaucrat, steeped in red-tape and raises technical issues to deny timely benefits to people.
At the height of the unprecedented floods, Sheikh Maktoum had tweeted his concern for the flood victims in Kerala, whose workforce had contributed to the Dubai success story.
On August 18, soon after Sheikh Maktoum had spoken to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the latter tweeted: “A big thanks to @hhshkmohd for his gracious offer to support people of Kerala during this difficult time. His concern reflects the special ties between governments and people of India and UAE”.
Subsequently on August 21, in Thiruvananthapuram, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan shared with the media bizman Yusuff Ali M A’s word that the UAE rulers had decided to donate $ 100 million towards Kerala’s relief and rehabilitation efforts. This mention of a specific amount, even before it was officially announced either by the UAE Government or the Centre, seems to have cast a shadow on the Sheikhdom's offer of help to a State with which it has vibrant people-to-people relationship.
