Taking ’em on board Tuesday, 05 April 2011 04:35

After coming to know that the Doha Centre for Media Freedom has got a new director, I looked up their website out of sheer curiosity. And while there, it struck me that the centre’s board of governors and advisory council had only nominal representation of Qataris on them. But then that seems to be the new trend in Qatar. Local organisations often select high-profile non-Qataris as board members. Nothing wrong there, considering they often bring in long years experience and expertise in their field that add value to the organisation in terms of better communications and performances. But the aim, however, should be to help Qatari nationals gain from the experience of such people on the board and acquire similar expertise and not having them as a badge of prestige and show-off.

We are not even talking about the ideological slant of non-Qatari board members, assuming they would all work for the benefit of the country. Sure we need to protect our identity, culture, tradition but there is no dearth of people who can uphold all this. Even if we are small in population, we have enough qualified people.

While, on board membership, we have a second type: Same faces on the boards of different organizations – some within the same umbrella, some with direct or indirect relationship with each other as if we have only these few capable people amongst us. It’s almost a matter prestige for some on how many boards they are on. And pretty often there are conflicts of interest. Some of them even run private businesses which either compete with or provide ancillary services in the same line of business. And I wish we uphold the old norms where top members of the government were not allowed to have private businesses.