RIYADH, 24 May 2004 — The Human Resources Development Fund is targeting the IT, construction and health care sectors as part of a new strategy to create 20,000 jobs for Saudis this year.
Even as the HRDF laid out its strategy, a top Saudi health executive has said there is an urgent need to build more medical colleges in the Kingdom, since the percentage of Saudi doctors, now only 20 percent of the workforce, was expected to reach 40 percent by 2025.
Dr. Mohamed A. Al-Sahlawi, director general of HRDF, and Dr. Mohammed Hassan Mufti, director general of the Security Forces Hospital, separately spoke to Arab News here recently. According to Dr. Al-Sahlawi, the Fund has already helped to provide jobs for 170 young Saudis in the IT sector in Hail. To this end, HRDF had organized a workshop in which suppliers to the IT sector and training institutions had been invited.
The idea was to motivate representatives of the IT sector to employ Saudis after they have been put through a training program funded by HRDF. He said these specialized training programs need funds which are beyond the resources of HRDF. “We spent SR300 million last year for the creation of 10,000 jobs.
This year we would need over SR600 million to meet our new target. The figure is beyond our resources of SR460 million which we raise through iqama fees,” Al-Sahlawi said.
He expressed hope the private sector would lend its support.
The director general said HRDF was aware of the fact that regional imbalance in national development had created a situation whereby population growth in Riyadh stood at eight percent annually as against the national average of 3.5 percent. This was due to the influx of population from the surrounding areas in search of better job opportunities in the capital.
Dr. Al-Sahlawi said the HRDF had proposed to the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) and the Supreme Commission for Tourism to map out a strategy for creating employment opportunities for Saudis where they live to help stabilize the situation. This would also require the employers to pay them a reasonable salary so as to motivate the Saudis to stay on.
“We at the fund are targeting those remote areas and studying their comparative advantages.” Besides Hail, the HRDF strategy had also delivered results in Jizan and Qasim in checking the migration of jobseekers. The private sector, he said, had also worked with the fund by subsidizing their training schemes and contributing toward salaries at a later stage. “We are targeting companies that have branches in other parts of the Kingdom,” he observed.
However, in some cases companies after agreeing to hire Saudis following the completion of their training scheme sprung fresh, less favorable, terms on the trainees. HRDF has two types of employment schemes — one tied to the training program and the other direct employment. The fund pays 75 percent of the employees’ salary during the two-year training period, besides contributing 50 percent of his salary after on-the-job training. Support does not exceed SR2,000 per month per employee.
HRDF is also encouraging the private sector in the outlying areas to pool their resources for the development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). It has also approached agricultural companies to begin Saudization of their work force.
The level of unemployment in the Kingdom has been officially placed at around 10 percent, Dr. Al-Sahlawi added.
Meanwhile, Dr. Mohammed Hassan Mufti, director general of the Security Forces Hospital, said the 3.2 percent annual growth rate in the Saudi population had strained the Kingdom’s financial and manpower sectors. That meant a creative response was urgently needed. Pointing out that his hospital was making optimum use of its resources, Dr. Mufti said: “As against 3,000 deliveries that we were performing in the past, we were able to carry out 7,000 deliveries last year. The number of medical files maintained had also shot up from 200,000 to 700,000 files thanks to the application of modern technology. We did this by relying on information technology, new methods of clinical treatment and optimum utilization of resources.”
Dr. Mufti said that in addition to opening more colleges to meet the market needs, especially for doctors, nurses and other paramedics, more primary health care centers were also required. The ministry plans to set up 2,000 new health centers in the Kingdom, while another objective of the seventh Five-Year Plan was to boost the number of nurses by 32 percent.
Dr. Mufti said various factors were responsible for the high cost of treatment. Among them were the use of high tech equipment in the hospitals, changes in the pattern of diseases, the longevity of patients, and the greater awareness among patients. He said the government currently bore 80 percent of the cost of healthcare services, and some of the burden would inevitable shift to health insurance companies.
However, other options were also available. There was a need to end duplication in the field of healthcare - healthcare providers now the ministries of defense, interior and the National Guard, and universities. “So this sector has to be organized in the interest of efficiency,” he said.
He suggested government hospitals should have a medical outreach program so they could charge for the services provided by them. He said one way of reducing the high cost of treatment was by constructing more hospitals and setting up regulatory standards.
Dr. Mufti said that as a result of the budgetary constraints there was an emerging trend toward cost-cutting measures on the part of hospitals. “We have to make sure that before we buy an expensive piece of equipment, there is no similar equipment in other hospitals in the same city. This would eliminate duplication of costly equipment and result in substantial savings. Moreover, other cities without such equipment would then be able to benefit from the optimum utilization of resources,” he added.