MUSCAT, 16 April 2008 — The head of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI), who is attending a forum here, said charity alone is not eradicating poverty and called on Saudi businesses to institute programs to help develop and expand the Kingdom’s middle class.
JCCI Chairman Saleh Al-Turki made the comments yesterday during a round-table discussion at the Global Forum of the Society for Organizational Learning.
“What we are saying is, although money is needed to help the poor, we have been spending millions of riyals over the past several years to support needy people, but we see poverty is increasing, and poor people are actually getting poorer,” Al-Turki told Arab News during an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the forum.
Al-Turki said although charity will always be an obligation for devout Muslims, he wanted to see a shift.
“I am expecting corporate Saudi Arabia — big and small companies — to move toward corporate social responsibility by creating social programs where value is added through employment or training or assistance with education so that people have the means to improve their situation,” he said.
“Charity will always be there, but we need to develop our middle class. Businesses are part of our society; they can help improve it by using their organizational structures to build programs that help people help themselves. This benefits companies too. Studies in the United States show that companies that adopt the corporate social responsibility concept make more profit.”
Al-Turki said that the JCCI is focusing on nurturing cooperation between Saudi businesses and government to improve economic development.
“We are committed to improving employment opportunities for men and women, and we are doing this by being the catalyst between various organizations that provide training i.e. the Saudi Human Resource Development Fund and the Ministry of Labor,” he said.
“We are also organizing a special employment process where we get private training institutes to come together with private companies... We signed an agreement yesterday, for example, that will see 150 unskilled young ladies gain training and then employment,” he added.
Al-Turki noted there have been issues with the interface between private sector training centers and the Human Resource Development Fund. However, he added that representatives from the Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam chambers were addressing the matter.
“I don’t think it’s a problem,” he said. “The process is taking longer than we expected, but it’s working now.”
More than 400 regional and international leaders from 45 countries are attending the forum, which concludes tonight. GulfSOL, the regional affiliate of SOL, organized the event in cooperation with the Oman Ministry of Higher Education with support from Nesma Holdings, Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Binladin Group, Caledonian College of Engineering, Oman Mobile, Bank Muscat and Petroleum Development Oman.
