The Cabinet decision is good news for more than 60,000 Saudi women who remain jobless after graduating 15 years ago.

The weekly Cabinet meeting, chaired by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, has set up a ministerial committee to finalize procedures to appoint graduates of these institutes, which were closed several years ago.

Culture and Information Minister Abdul Aziz Khoja said 12,600 graduates of those institutes would be given fourth grade administrative jobs at girls schools within three years, beginning academic year 2011-12. Every year 4,200 graduates will be employed under the plan.

Priority will be given to candidates who have waited the longest and secured the highest marks. They will be given jobs near their homes.

The secondary women teachers’ institutes were established in 1976 to train teachers to work in primary schools. There were 81 such institutes in 1982 with 7,637 students.

According to a statement issued by former Education Minister Abdullah Al-Obaid, about 60,000 institute graduates are jobless as university graduates are preferred over them because of their higher qualification.

Suhaila Hammad, member of the National Society for Human Rights, welcomed the government decision and hoped it would ease the plight of thousands of women. “It is the duty of the government to create jobs for graduates of these institutes as well as those of intermediate colleges,” she told Arab News.

Hammad said the government should allow these graduates to improve their skills to help them land better jobs. She claimed there were more than 300,000 unemployed women graduates in the Kingdom.

She wants the Human Resource Development Fund to provide these graduates with necessary training to improve their chances of employment in various fields.

Deputy Labor Minister Mufrej Al-Haqabani told a seminar in Abha recently that 65 percent of qualified Saudi women are unemployed. Around 95 percent of working Saudi women are in the public sector, the bulk of them in education.

The Cabinet meeting referred to the 29th anniversary of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and said Saudi Arabia was looking forward to more GCC achievements and integration in the coming years.

It commended the resolutions taken by the GCC Ministerial Council, comprising foreign ministers, during a meeting in Jeddah on Sunday. The council had backed the efforts of Turkey and Brazil to find a peaceful solution to Iran’s nuclear standoff with the West. It had also urged Tehran to abide by the principles of international legitimacy.

Khoja said the Cabinet approved the executive bylaw for combating drugs and narcotics, decided to establish diplomatic relations with Montenegro, sign agreements with Brazil and Uzbekistan for cooperation in sports and youth affairs and endorsed agreements with Belarus for investment promotion and protection and for the avoidance of double taxation and prevention of tax evasion.