JEDDAH, 19 October 2003 — Approximately 60 percent of expatriate workers in the Kingdom are in jobs such as plumbing, metal works and carpentry, a press report said.

Khaled Al-Mutlaq, director of Al-Mutlaq Establishment, said the expatriates’ monopoly of these jobs would obstruct progress in the sector.

Speaking to Al-Watan Arabic daily, he said expatriates had established their dominance in the sector as a result of the government’s leniency toward illegal businesses.

Fahd Al-Harbi, owner of Al-Amal Establishment, said fewer than 10 percent of Saudis were engaged in carpentry and metal work and he stressed the need to train Saudis for those jobs.

The government has stepped up its Saudization drive in order to reduce the country’s growing unemployment problem which is estimated at 15 percent. A decision has been made to limit the number of expatriates to 20 percent of the country’s population. The number of a particular nationality should not exceed 10 percent of expatriate workers.

Dr. Ali Al-Ghafees, governor of the General Organization for Technical Education and Vocational Training, has estimated the total number of expatriates at 7.3 million.

Labor and Social Affairs Minister Dr. Ali Al-Namlah recently announced plans to Saudize 25 jobs in the sales sector within three years. The new move will affect expatriates working at stores selling clothes, textiles, toys, abayas, discounted goods, perfume, car parts and cellular phones.

In the first year, the salesmen in stores with only one member of staff must be Saudi, while in stores with two staff, at least one must be Saudi. In the second year, 50 percent of all workers in the stores must be Saudi, reaching 75 percent in the third year.

According to a report issued by the Saudi American Bank in 2001, unemployment among Saudi males is set to rise to 15 percent this year. “We estimate that unemployment among Saudi males stands at 14 percent,” said the SAMBA report.

Unemployment remains the most important challenge to the Saudi economy. SAMBA explained that its figures pertained to male jobseekers because women “do not enter the labor market in large numbers” as they are restricted mostly to the education and health sectors.

The government aims to create employment for an additional 817,300 Saudis over the next five years through a mixture of Saudization and the creation of new jobs.