I was shocked by what he said, especially as he has had a good chunk of success in the private sector, particularly with the Savola Group. Maybe the minister was influenced by figures he heard during a workshop on job opportunities in this sector. I hope he will crosscheck these figures, which should have been presented in a scientific and a professional manner.

The figures mentioned in the workshop claimed that a million young people would be employed in the retail sector by the year 2020, a far cry from an earlier number which said about 10,000 youths would be employed within three years.

Mr. Minister, I do not think that many of those who were happy about your appointment would agree with you. More so if they were joined by the jobseekers in a country whose latest budgets set out a large number of projects.

If the ministry made an effort, it would come out with a mechanism that would compel the private sector to find more jobs for Saudi youths in these projects. Mr. Minister, in all honesty and to save your precious time, I would advise you to forget about these figures.

The ambitions of Saudi youths involve far more than being a vegetable seller or a worker in a butcher shop. They do not also want to work as cashiers, a job which is fully automated now.

Mr. Minister, I hope you will use your strategic thinking to find ways that would enable you to solve the problem of unemployment. You are the son of the retail sector and thus know better than anyone else that this sector is disorganized with no clear relationship between the employer and the employee. You know very well that the marginal profits of this sector with razor-sharp competitiveness will not enable it to provide more jobs for Saudi youths who are not willing to accept the statements of the officials at face value. You are also well aware that one of the problems facing this sector involve foreigners running these businesses under fake Saudi ownership.

You may also know that privatization constituted a large part of this agony. Just look at the number of Saudi employees in the telecommunications companies, whose revenues surpassed SR52.5 billion in 2009, before and after privatization and you will be shocked. After the privatization of banks and telecommunications companies, it is now the turn of the water company. It is not acceptable to sack citizens from their jobs on various pretexts. We also do not need the killer element of globalization, which is privatization.  Using the pretext of competitiveness, these companies are now making arrangements to hand over their Saudi employees to other companies on fixed salaries.

The ministry has a lot to do to force private companies to respect Saudization requirements. Just for your information, we have 5,262 factories, 53,888 hospitals and 26,268 schools who all need workers, while we have 20,716 graduates with technical education and vocational training. How is it possible that the banks, with all the privileges given to them, employ only 31,539 Saudis?

How is it possible that the Eastern Province, which is a main center of industrial activity, has 187,787 Saudis working in the private sector while their number in Riyadh is 242,912? We are the only country in the world that begs the private sector to find jobs for our sons and daughters.

We should have a body to provide us accurate unemployment figures using ID numbers. This body should be linked to the Department of Statistics, the Pensions Department and the Social Security Fund.