RIYADH, 8 August 2004 — Small and medium enterprises have urged the government to review its blanket ban on SMEs recruiting foreign manpower on the ground that they are “trading in visas.”

In separate interviews, two SME representatives — Bassem Al-Zamil, general manager of B.A. Al-Zamail Est., and Shaukat Naeem Ghumman, purchasing manager of Al-Babtain Trading Co., told Arab News that the current restrictions on the import of manpower could penalize even businessmen with genuine manpower needs and create more unemployment — the problem that they are meant to solve.

“The ministry has complete data on all private sector establishments, since it had distributed CDs among all companies registered with the chambers of commerce and industry. It can, therefore, easily identify firms that are engaged in the visa racket. The policy of a wholesale ban on issuance of visas needs to be reviewed,” Shaukat Naeem added.

Describing the visa policy as counter-productive, Bassem said: “Already, I have closed down two of my branches, since I was unable to get visas to bring in foreign manpower to replace expatriates who had to leave on medical and other grounds. I not only lost a good opportunity of expanding my line of business but also had to incur loss due to the closure of the two branches in Riyadh.”

Minister of Labor Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi had given small establishments a three-month grace period until Aug. 23 to enable them to meet their manpower needs.

The minister said the ban on manpower recruitment had become imperative, since “they were trading in visas”. At the time, he stressed that Saudization was a strategic option, since the problem of expatriate workers had assumed “alarming proportions.” About seven million expatriates work in the Kingdom and they form nearly 50 percent of the Saudi population.

Referring to these regulations, Bassem said some of the major problems they are facing relate to the lack of qualified Saudis in the line of furniture business. “The only option we have is to train and absorb them at a higher salary. But our experience shows that they don’t stick around for more than five to six months, as they will leave when a better offer comes along.”

According to him, the then Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs used to send inspectors to verify the manpower needs of a company whenever it applied for visas. “If we asked for ten visas, they would sanction seven or eight. But now they have stopped issuing any visa even before the deadline. Moreover, the inspectors do not understand our needs. They cannot, for example, distinguish between an architect and a designer.”

Elaborating on this, Abu Nawwaf, a Saudi businessman in the furnishing trade, said: “We are going through a strange situation. Ninety percent of our customers are women, since they are the decision-makers in the matter of home furnishing. Yet, our sales force consists of male expatriates. Of course, Saudi women have no problem discussing their requirements with an expatriate male. But they certainly feel uneasy in the presence of Saudi men. How then are you going to replace expatriates with Saudis? Besides, Saudis need to be trained if they were to give advice in terms of color schemes or other technicalities of the profession.”

The alternative, he pointed out, is to employ Saudi women as part of the sales team. “But there are unanswered questions: Are there any training programs in this category available for them? Will the government allow them to work in this sector?”

He said if the government wants to promote Saudization of work force in different fields, there should be an adequate number of trainees for each profession.