RIYADH, 27 April 2007 — Twenty-eight-year-old Morad Al-Bashir graduated with a technical degree in computer engineering, which easily makes him qualified to work in any IT department.
Instead, Al-Bashir, a father of four, sells mint out of the back of his beat-up GMC Suburban just off the capital’s King Fahd Road. The ring around the collar of his thobe is drenched in sweat. He is always on the lookout for officials who might confiscate his product as a penalty for running an unlicensed street-vending business. He earns about SR60 a day.
Al-Bashir says that despite his technical qualifications, which include proficiency in English, employers seem hesitant to hire a Saudi. He says he feels discriminated against by his own people.
“It beats logic that a qualified Saudi like myself, a graduate in electronics, who speaks decent English, cannot find a job,” he said. “What good is my degree when I sell mint to earn a living?”
Over the years, Al-Bashir says, he has come to realize that his dream of attaining a decent job after graduating from a technical college was nothing more than a mirage he had been chasing in the desert.
Al-Bashir’s journey began in 2005 when he began looking for a job after graduation. His graduation certificate, several training courses and a good command of the English language could not convince employers in over 40 public and private firms in the Kingdom to employ him. One by one he crossed off the names of potential employers from a list he had compiled. Bashir showed Arab News the list of companies, as well as his degree and résumé.
Even the government labor departments and employment centers were of no use, he said. “All of them say the same thing to me: ‘We don’t have anything currently available for you,” he said. “Leave us your CV and papers and we will call you.’”
The call never came.
Saudi Arabia has implemented a Saudization policy in recent years, an attempt to reduce the Kingdom’s dependence on imported foreign workers at all levels of employment. Companies are assigned quotas, much like race-based affirmative-action programs in the United States or job and university admission quotas for “untouchables” in India. But companies regularly do not meet their Saudization quotas, or they cheat on the paperwork. The Ministry of Labor regularly bars companies found to be violating these quotas from recruiting foreign labor.
It’s common to see foreigners working from café baristas and street cleaners to doctors and company CEOs. But the policy is impeded not just by a lack of skilled and experienced Saudi workers or the reputation of Saudis being less reliable than foreigners, but also by the difference in wages that a foreign worker will accept compared to a Saudi.
An IT worker from India, for example, will likely be cheaper than an equally qualified Saudi. Foreign workers are also less likely to complain of long hours, or expect benefits like two-day weekends.
But Al-Bashir disagrees with a lot of these issues and says the discrimination he has felt has “no logical grounds.”
“If they want a Saudi to enhance their Saudization level, here I am: a citizen of this country,” said Al-Bashir. “If they want someone with experience, here I am. If it’s English proficiency they’re looking for, I’ve got that, too.”
Al-Bashir says that companies may hire Saudis temporarily to fulfill their quotas, and then slowly try to squeeze them out later. “I was hired once, but the company used to deliberately delay the payment of my salary for a couple of months to push me out,” he said. “I tried not to give in, but I have a family to feed.”
When Al-Bashir isn’t trying to put food on his family’s table by selling mint by the side of the road, he’s regularly visiting the Saudi Labor Office in his ongoing quest to find a job that fits his qualifications. But he says that the bureaucracy isn’t helping. He said one day the Labor Office suddenly told him he was registered with a private company in Madinah and that he would have to go to the Labor Office branch there for job-placement services.
According to Al-Bashir, he had turned down a hotel job in Madinah because the SR1,200-a-month salary wasn’t enough of an incentive to relocate his family over 700 km from Riyadh. But for some reason the hotel registered his name as an employee anyway. Al-Bashir said the hotel was using his name to cheat on its Saudization quota, and subsequently wreaking bureaucratic havoc on his ability to acquire job-placement assistance.
Now Al-Bashir must go to Madinah to obtain a release paper from the hotel for a job he never held and submit it to the Labor Office to resubmit his information for job-placement assistance. Meanwhile, he has to spend 10 hours a day selling mint by the side of the road to feed his family.
