Fictitious employments and cumulative exercise of a plurality of functions are strictly forbidden, but ...

This article has been reproduced non dated in the biographical essay devoted to Said Hajji par A. B. Bakr Kadiri (vol 2, p. 206-207)

The writer who signs his writings under the pseudonym "News hawker" devoted the article he published in our newspaper's last issue, to the intellectuals who are not allowed to exempt courses in the Karawiyin university because of their incapacity of exerting the profession of a teacher, and perceive at the end of each month a remuneration for a fictitious teaching. He was astonished by this anomaly, whereas an important army of men of knowledge is starving and deserves our commiseration.

If the Karawiyin counts within its rows a categoty of highly cultivated persons, who do not exceed the fingers number, and perceive emoluments as teachers without any counterpart, it is however not exagerated to note that such a practice has become current in all cities and regions of Morocco where it appears with perhaps more acuity and a total lack of reserve in this kind of embezzlements as in the mentioned university.

In almost all cities, a certain category of notabilities and influent persons consider themselves as civil servants of the Administration of Moslem Habous in order to perceive at the end of each month a remuneration which they withdraw the very day of the payment issue. No one of them worries to think of honouring his religious and educational obligations towards the worship places where he unduly touches such treatments and wages. ^[6]

It is even frequent that these notabilities and influent persons transmit such a privilege from generation to generation, without that the various beneficiaries feel any obligation to come to the places where they are supposed to exert the office for which they perceive monthly wages. This one is said to exert the profession of "Imam" in a mosque, or that of a teacher in a school. This other passes for a daily or weekly preacher. This third one is considered as a declamator of the Coran. But all of them prevail on the Habous Administration to accomplish their function when the month is over, and they come to sign on the paiment register to touch a well counted amount of dirhams. One sees them after this formality, leaving in a superb attitude, and a quiet conscience as if they have been rewarded for a duty they have accomplished.

It is astonishing to note that this type of individuals belongs, not to the poor class, but to the category of the well known notabilities who belong to the rows of the liberal professions whose monthly income exceeds thousands of dirhams. Those are the ones who pass for the civil servants of the Habous Administration and are remunerated for a fictitious employment with salaries normally due to the poor. But this does not prevent them from perceiving some "rials"^[7] which will never make them richer as they are, whereas this moderate sum could largely relieve the poor if the rich classes were not at this point greedy to monopolize the whole amount of the Habous salaries for themselves.

Every year we learn that the Habous Ministry publishes a circulate which reiterates the prohibition of this practice. But we are recalled at once to reality by noticing that this circular, in spite of its being published and diffused in the various services depending of this Administration, does not receive the slightest beginning of execution. We assist, on the contrary, to a recrudescence of flows of the same persons moving at the end of each month towards the Habous offices, either personnaly or by interposed persons, to sign the recepts corresponding to the paiments of the salaries.

One can only be astonished and wonder wether the circular of the Ministry ever had any follow up. More serious still, among these pseudo civil servants, we can enumerate several office holders who are at the same time Imams, declamators of the Coran and teachers. The time has come to put an end to such a greed, by instorinf, if necessary, the most severe control on the intrigues of these alleged civil servants. The money of the Habous must be used to receive an assignment in conformity with the objectives initially assigned to them. It is urgent that cease the fraudulent schemes to which certain persons of the rich classes devote themselves. The poor must have the absolute priority as far as the recrutements are concerned. Nobody should be allowed to claim the privilege of the functions plurality or to have the indecency to benefit from fictitious employments.

Such measures are likely to reduce the misery of the poor, to fill the houses of God and garantee a better propagation of the knowledge in accordance with the spirit of those who gave their donations and entrusted a whole or a part of their wealth and properties to the Habous Administration.