Recruitment of 1.2m expats ‘defeating Saudization drive’

The annual recruitment of nearly 1.2 million foreign workers has hampered the Kingdom’s nationalization initiatives, said Saudi economists and experts, while urging the government to review its recruitment policy.
“We recruit about 1.2 million foreign workers annually at a time when we have more than a million Saudi job seekers,” said economist Abdullah Al-Maghlouth. “It is a big challenge for the government to find jobs for more than a million unemployed Saudis,” he added.
Saudis account for only 15 percent of jobs in the private sector, with expats taking the lion’s share of 7.5 million while citizens holding 1.4 million jobs.
The Labor Ministry claims that it has created jobs for 750,000 Saudis during the past three years through the Nitaqat nationalization program.
“A foreigner may be ready to work for 12 hours daily for low salary and Saudis would not be able to compete with them. This is the main reason for private companies hiring expats,” Al-Maghlouth said. He added that Saudi Arabia has been spending billions of riyals every year on manpower development through education and training. “Still, we don’t see results from this investment.”
Essam Khalifa, another economist, called for a qualitative improvement of the Saudi labor market to increase the demand for Saudi workers compared with expats. “Saudis should be ready to take on any job and they should be given proper training to compete with foreigners,” he added.
Pointing to the crux of the problem, Prof. Habibullah Turkistani of King Abdulaziz University said the private sector prefers cheaper foreign labor to inexperienced Saudis, who demand higher salaries. “Saudi workers should be given a minimum salary of SR3,500 because of rising living standards and increasing prices of goods and services.”
He expressed dismay over the private sector’s neglect of national manpower despite various government incentives. “The Human Resource Development Fund has offered to pay 50 percent of Saudis’ salaries for three to four years,” he pointed out.