YANBU: Efforts are under way to establish a small industrial city meant exclusively for productive families in the private sector in Yanbu, according to Hessah bint Abdul Rahman Al-Aun, a businesswoman who promotes the project
“No obstacle will stop the plan as I already have agreements with various ministries and provincial governors to set up the project, which basically aims at supporting poor families. A Chinese company will undertake the training of women and other workers to work at the factories in the industrial city,” Hessah told several businessmen and members of the Yanbu Chamber of Commerce and Industry at a meeting yesterday. “Yanbu Gov. Ibrahim Al-Sultan has promised the land for the SR200 million city occupying an area of 500,000 square meters,” Hessah said.
She hoped that the city would provide employment for 6,000 families and support approximately 40,000 individuals.
The primary aim of the project is to help women who work at home and earn money to support their dependents. “This is a strategic national project as it aims at finding employment for the unemployed and helping them to make economic progress. All participants in the city’s activities will profit from it.”
Hessah added that one of the major hurdles she came across in implementing the project was bureaucratic delay. “It takes a lot of time to move papers in ministries and government offices despite the fact that all the officials I met welcomed and supported the idea,” the businesswoman said.
Hessah said she selected Yanbu as the location to implement the project because it has various advantages such as the proximity to the King Fahd Industrial Port, and Yanbu Commercial Port, the presence of the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu and a modern airport apart from the support of the governor of Madinah Province, Prince Abdul Aziz bin Majed.
She added that another obstacle she faced was the difficulty to get land as the land close to the city was privately owned. “However, the governor of Yanbu promised to make the required land available,” she said.
She called on Yanbu businessmen to invest in the project.
Shedding light on the details of the upcoming project, Hessah said, “The city will have 35 environment-friendly small and medium industries that suit the capabilities of productive families. The small factories will make use of 157 products from Saudi Basic Industries Corp. as raw materials to produce products that can be locally consumed or exported.” The project could be called strategic because it would be the first attempt to provide employment for a large number of mostly uneducated women in the Kingdom and make use of their resources in a productive manner.