JEDDAH, 27 November 2006 — In an aggressive drive to Saudize 81 percent of travel and tourism jobs within three years, Prince Sultan ibn Salman, secretary-general of the Supreme Commission for Tourism (SCT), yesterday launched a major training program for Saudi graduates.

Prince Sultan commended the training program and thanked travel and tourism firms for offering 3,000 jobs to young Saudis. The training program is organized by a group of government departments including the National Project for Tourism Manpower Development, the Labor Ministry, the Higher Education Ministry and the Institute of Public Administration.

During the 14-monthlong programs, selected trainees will be given courses in English language, computer operation and specialized travel and tourism jobs.

“They will receive a monthly stipend of SR1,500 during the training period,” an SCT official said, adding that the trainees would also receive professional certificates that are internationally approved.

The graduates of technical colleges as well as commercial and general secondary schools are given training to take up jobs such as reservation officer, ticketing staff, sales and marketing executives, passenger service staff, accountants, client service staff and tour guides, tour consultants, air cargo staff, tour designers, and tourism information center staff.

There are nearly 2,800 travel and tourism agencies operating in the Kingdom. Two years ago, the government forced these agencies to Saudize their jobs. As a result they suffered a cumulative loss of SR100 million.

The SCT then gave travel agents two years grace period to employ adequate number of trained Saudi workers. The SCT wants to generate 2.3 million jobs for Saudis in the travel sector over the next 20 years.

The commission earlier asked travel agencies to provide details of their workers.

Travel agencies have submitted job categories of their staff, their nationalities, total number of employees and other details.

In a recent statement, Labor Minister Ghazi Al-Gosaibi said his ministry would carry out a 25-year strategy to fight unemployment among Saudis, which according to latest official estimates, is 9.1 percent among men and 26.3 percent among women. “We will implement 26 policies through 108 mechanisms in order to reduce unemployment in the short- and long-terms,” he said.

The minister called for stringent measures to cut the unemployment rate and for reducing the country’s addiction to foreign labor.

Gosaibi described unemployment as a major challenge and said, “It cannot be dealt with while the country’s doors are left open to hundreds of thousands of foreigners who come to work here.”

Gosaibi attributed the employment problem to low qualifications of job seekers, incompatibility of their educational qualifications with job-market requirements, lack of readiness on the part of some private companies to apply Saudization policies, and low salaries offered by private firms.

“Fighting unemployment will remain the ministry’s priority,” Gosaibi said. “Ending unemployment is essential in the light of the new statistics.”

The minister was referring to a study conducted by the General Statistics Department on work force in the Kingdom.

He spoke about the ministry’s nationwide campaign to provide employment for nationals. “Among some 155,000 Saudi job seekers registered with us during the campaign we have found employment for about 133,000 by this August,” he pointed out.

Referring to the ministry’s efforts to cut foreign recruitment, Gosaibi said the number of recruitment visas issued annually declined from 597,000 in 2002 to 353,000 last year. He said the unemployment rate did not reflect the Kingdom’s current robust economic growth.