It is no surprise that what can be seen is what gets most attention. The issue of “Saudization” is one such item on a long agenda this country is grappling with.
The term basically means that we want jobs for our children. Fine, and the government has a responsibility on that front. It probably is doing what it can, yet it takes with one hand what it gives with another.
Let us look at the hundreds of civil servant who have expired age-wise and never had anything professional to offer. Instead of rejoicing that they are finally out of the way into blissful retirement and things can move on, they get extensions to their contracts. They couldn’t do it at 30, how in the world are they going to perform at 60? Their main reason for staying on is to keep the perks, stay at home, and employ their incompetent sons. The infernal cycle continues.
On the popular front, we concentrate on taxi drivers and supermarket clerks. Why? Because the jobs are visible to all. But what about what is hidden in our houses? How many of us have “Saudized” their homes? Practically none. Every house has a maid for example. I know a family that has eight daughters and they all screeched for a maid to take care of them. What are they doing themselves? Nothing, apart from shopping and filing their nails and running up huge phone bills.
Men are worse. Instead of waking up half hour early every morning, they prefer to hire a driver to take the kids to school. The proud father ends up in bed instead of the office anyway. An Indian driver I met while he was running away from the family he worked for told me that their kids used to wake him up at three in the morning to get them ice cream.
The worst behavior belongs to the mothers who cannot or will not take care of their children. Maids and quasi-governesses take care of the young till they grow up speaking better Indonesian and Filipino than Arabic.
I have no problem with that if there was a need, but a nation exercising its privilege should not ask for menial jobs. Either this or that, you can’t have it both ways. The only tragedy is that the industrious maids could not instill some work ethic in those kids. I guess genes overrule bringing up.
A job is not a right. An opportunity to get a job is. There is a difference. The Mamluks, who ruled the Islamic world competently for nearly 500 years, understood that. They gave political jobs to their competent and “trusted” men while other jobs were open to competition. Admin and financial jobs ended up in Jewish and Christian hands. It is called competency. They managed, among other things, to drive away the last of the Crusaders; the local Jewish and Christian population fought with them willingly.
What I believe needs to happen is to Saudize Saudi Arabia. That can only happen on the individual level from top to bottom. Hand over your drivers and I’ll give you people who drive purposefully. Give me your lazy and cantankerous masses and I’ll give you a nation. I don’t think we need to write this on a huge statue; a line in the sand is good enough.
