“There are some unscrupulous people who do not adhere to employment regulations and engage in illegal trade in labor visas,” Labor Minister Adil Fakeih said in a statement on the sidelines of a seminar on the employment of disabled people, Al-Watan daily reported on Tuesday.

However, Fakeih noted that the illegal trade has fallen considerably in recent times. The ministry is striving to end the practice totally and violators will be punished, the minister said.

Fakeih said his ministry planned to make expatriate labor no longer attractive to Saudi employers.

A major reason for the large-scale employment of expatriates in jobs where Saudis are available is the comparative low cost in employing foreign workers.

The foreign labor could be made less attractive by hiking the cost of labor import, which will, in turn, make Saudi labor cheaper and more attractive to sponsors, the minister said.

He also said Saudization committees will be formed to speed up the employment of Saudis in the private sector.

Fakeih appealed to the people to inform the Labor Ministry when they notice any illegal trading in job visas. They need only post the information on the website of the ministry, he said.

“We cannot work without the cooperation of the society. People should help the ministry to protect their regulations from being violated,” the minister said.

Fahd Al-Takhifi, assistant undersecretary for development at the ministry, said the ministry received more than 1.7 million job applications from unemployed Saudi women.

While presenting a paper on the Labor Ministry’s efforts to check the unemployment on the second day of a seminar on women’s employment, Al-Takhifi said the applications showed that 333,000 women are interested in private sector jobs. The other sectors where women would like to work are the health and the education. The applicants included 2,225 master degree holders, he added.

“The increasing number of women graduates signifies the need to give priority to the issue. It also needs a strategy to deal with this,” he said.