A feeling of sadness and anger overtakes me every time I listen to the ideologues and theorists of Saudization lecturing us. All they do is talk. They have never managed to come up with a solution to a relatively simple problem: How to replace foreigners holding jobs that do not require extensive practical experience or advanced academic qualifications.
At the same time, I find it difficult to understand why we keep following the same policy in regard to those who break the country’s immigration and employment laws.
For years the security forces have been running campaigns to round up violators but no permanent solution seems to result. A campaign may lead to the arrest of a large number of violators but within a short period of time — a few weeks at most — it is business again as usual. A new campaign is planned and executed; the cycle goes on and the violators proliferate. As a Saudi who is worried about the problem, I consider it my responsibility to contribute to solving it. The proposal I would like to offer represents a small contribution toward solving a problem that seems to have become insoluble.
The first step should be to conduct a comprehensive survey to determine the number of foreigners living here who have been in the country for a long time and who have mixed with the local population, either through marriage or business. This group should be given legal residence status, their academic and practical qualifications identified in order to determine the kind of jobs they can do. At the same time, the recruitment of foreign labor to do those jobs should be stopped altogether.
We then move to listing all jobs, currently done by foreigners, that could be taken over by Saudis. The Saudis chosen for the jobs must be willing to work 40 hours a week according to clearly defined employment terms which include health insurance and end of service benefits. A monitoring body should be set up to ensure that the rights of Saudi workers are guaranteed just as those of the employer are. We should then move to identify projects which require manual workers and train Saudis to take over these jobs.
Saudization must never be viewed as a noble dream that every one wants to see realized, but as a serious and pressing demand to achieve social justice and reduce the burden on the state.
