RIYADH — The government’s policy of Saudization, by reserving certain jobs for Saudis only as a way to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign labor and reduce unemployment, has been much debated over the past few years. While this policy has been around in one form or another for a long time, it did not pick up pace until the mid-1990s. Since then, several targets have been announced, some of which have been met and some of them which have not.

Reality proved the task to be much more difficult than expected.

It is still unclear if the goal of Saudization to create more jobs for Saudis, especially in the private sector that is dominated by foreigners, will be reached anytime soon. Regardless, it seems that too much focus on the private sector has made some forget about parts of the government where Saudization is noticeably lagging. An area where this problem is very prominent is the Ministry of Health, in which less than 20 percent of the Saudi public health sector’s workforce is comprised of Saudis. The dependence on foreign doctors and nurses is even higher in the private health care sector.

The ministry says the health care industry’s dependence on foreign labor is due to the fact that universities and colleges in this country cannot cope with the large and growing demand of national health care services. The government has tried to solve this in part by establishing colleges about a decade ago in order to prepare more secondary school graduates to work in public hospitals.

So while reading Arab News on Aug. 18, a news item left me in a state of confusion. The headline read: “More Saudi Pharmacists Needed,” and the article said that according an expert in the field of pharmacy and medical education in the Kingdom, the country needs more than 100,000 Saudi pharmacy graduates to replace foreigners currently working in this area of health care.

Being a pharmacy student who will graduate next summer, such news is supposed to make me feel safe about my future career. Instead I am skeptical.

The truth on the ground is often different from the statements of officials and experts.

Shali Al-Jedani, chairman of the board of Ibn Sina College of Medical Sciences in Jeddah, said, “those who pass the degree will instantly be employed.”

I beg to disagree. Despite what he said, I know many recent graduates of pharmacology — including my brother — who are still looking for a job.

My brother and his colleagues graduated in December 2006 from the College of Health Sciences in Al-Ahssa, which used to be a part of the Ministry of Health but was recently (along with the other colleges created in the mid-90s to produce Saudi specialists for the public health care sector) put under the Ministry of Higher Education.

Very few of these graduates, only those at the very top of the class with honors, were offered employment in the ministry’s hospitals. The rest of the graduates went out looking for jobs in hospitals in the private sector after the ministry turned them away.

More than nine months have passed and most of these graduates remain jobless. I have been trying to find a reason behind this situation.

These students are not under-qualified, because the school from which they graduated used to be managed by the Ministry of Health that supposedly prepares these students to serve the public health care sector’s specific needs. Also, these students do not lack actual work experience because a major part of their studies involved 15-week internships at pharmacies and hospitals.

There’s no doubt that the government has been working very hard to push Saudization in its ministries and the private sector. But when we come to a situation like this one we wonder about the efficiency and effectiveness of these efforts.

While the government complains about the reluctance of the private sector to employ more Saudis, we find some parts of the government, such as the Ministry of Health, failing to employ students that have gone through educational programs designed by the ministry itself to produce qualified Saudi employees.

If the government isn’t hiring these Saudi graduates in the public health care sector, why should it expect the private sector to go the extra mile to hire Saudis, especially considering that foreign labor costs less?

This question must also be directed to the Shoura Council, which should provide the government with the required guidance in order to improve performance. It is unacceptable for members of the council — several of which come from backgrounds related to education and health care — to neglect this issue. Instead they should be pushing for real solutions.

The government and private sector alike should formulate a plan that more seriously addresses the needs of our current and future generations of young Saudi men and women. It’s such a pity to see the educated and qualified remain unemployed due to the government’s lack of planning and strategic vision.

— Ahmed Al-Omran is studying to be a pharmacist at King Saud University in Riyadh. He writes the Saudi Jeans blog at http://saudijeans.org/