The country spends $4 billion a year to hire foreign drivers.

Saudi Arabia, which still bans women from driving, spends nearly $4 billion a year to pay for 800,000 foreign drivers.

Illustration photo. (Source: wsj.com)

This amount includes the cost of visas, accommodation, insurance, salaries, uniforms and other expenses that families have to pay to get foreign drivers.

A burden is being placed on the budgets of Saudi families in the current difficult economic climate. When households no longer have money to hire a driver, the man of the family (son, father) has to pick up the children from school, shop at the supermarket or take them to the doctor whenever they are sick.

This is the only country in the world that bans women from driving and also the only country in the world that spends so much money to maintain this ban. Al-Riyadh newspaper revealed the huge amount and said that Saudi Arabia has a population of 19 million and an average of 6 people per household.

Religious leaders in the country have often been the first to come up with specific justifications for banning women from driving. They cite Islamic law prohibiting women from driving, and assert that driving is against the dignity of women as enshrined in Islamic law. From there, the ban on driving in Saudi Arabia has a legal basis.

Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz ibn Abdullah Ali ash-Shaykh asserted that banning women from driving is a way to protect them. Grand Mufti ash-Shaykh asserted that men with bad intentions will be able to do bad things to female drivers.

Another conservative cleric, Saleh Al-Luhaydan, said that in other Arab countries, 33% of women drivers cause accidents. In the Koran, women driving is forbidden for moral and social reasons.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, one of the country's most powerful men, has said Riyadh is not yet ready to allow women to drive. The issue of women driving is not just a religious issue but also a matter of social acceptance or rejection. Society still does not believe that women can drive.

And the newspaper concluded that as long as these seemingly absurd things in other countries continue to be applied as they are in this country, Saudi Arabia will continue to spend billions of dollars unreasonably to hire foreign drivers./.

According to VIETNAM+