Low salary of Saudis under Hafiz ‘due to poor qualifications’

Labor Minister Adel Fakeih attributed the low salary of many Saudis employed with the help of the Hafiz scheme to low educational qualifications of the candidates.
“About 95 percent of the youth registered with the Hafiz scheme do not have a university degree. It is quite natural that salaries will match their qualifications,” Fakeih said in a recent YouTube clipping.
About 48 percent of the applicants registered with the Hafiz are holders of secondary school degrees, the minister said.
The ministry has undertaken a training program with the aim of enabling youth to be eligible for better salaries, Al-Hayat newspaper reported yesterday.
“We are not satisfied with the Saudization in quantity but we are striving for quality Saudization, which also aims to enable Saudi youth become better qualified and get good salaries, although private firms would be pressured to pay decent wages to Saudis,” the minister said in the first ever YouTube appearance of a minister in the Kingdom.
The minister added that the ministry would announce shortly a minimum salary for Saudis. The payment of the minimum salary would be binding on all private companies. If an employer pays a Saudi lower than the minimum wage, then that Saudi worker would not be counted for the Nitaqat program, he said.
Although the Nitaqat program is implemented successfully, some companies are attempt to circumvent the program by appointing Saudis temporarily and after they pass the Nitaqat test the Saudi workers are sacked. However, this ploy is being tackled with steps to ensure that a worker has to be present in the company for three months and after three months a worker cannot be sacked arbitrarily under Saudi law, he said.
The minister hoped that the number of registered youth in the Hafiz scheme would be close to 240,000 by the end of August. He added that early this week payments for 1.3 million beneficiaries of Hafiz for the last month were made.