Panda Azizia United said the number of Saudis employed by the company has so far reached 4,146 since the beginning of the year (2014) Kingdomwide, of which 70 were from the category of special needs.

The growth rate of Saudi employees exceeded 40 percent where their number grew from 4,500 in 2013 to more than 6,500 in October 2014. The Saudi work force in the company represented one third of the overall work force of the company which currently stands at more than 20,000 employees.

In this context, CEO of Azizia Panda United Muwaffaq Mansour Jamal said expansion of the company’s markets, including Panda, Hyper Panda and Pandati, has considerably contributed to the provision of thousands of job opportunities for male and female Saudis.

“The continued localization (Saudization) strategy, which is being applied by Panda, is based on the provision of intensified training programs and support of work environment which has enormously minimized job leakage which is one of negative phenomenon associated with retail market in the Kingdom,” he said.