In a recent report published in Al-Eqtisadiah business daily Dr. Abdul Wahid Al-Humaid, deputy minister of labor for planning and development, underestimated the impact of Riyadh’s accession to the World Trade Organization on Saudization. He said the WTO would not insist the Kingdom back down in its drive to nationalize jobs. He added that the Kingdom would negotiate with the organization about the rate of foreign manpower inflow acceptable according to requirements.
I appreciate the minister’s giving this assurance. The question is how far we have gone in implementing the Saudization law. Even now before WTO accession, we have not succeeded with Saudization. I want to know why: Is our failure because of our fear of WTO regulations or are our youth not qualified for Saudization?
I ask Dr. Humaid this question, not to hold him responsible but to initiate a discussion on this complex issue.
And nobody should think that the Ministry of Labor is solely responsible for providing jobs to the unemployed. There are other departments and agencies which should assume their responsibilities in making our youth qualified to take up various jobs.
On Sunday Dr. Humaid wrote an impressive article, which appeared in Al-Watan, entitled: “A Message to Citizens: A Saudi is a Human Just Like Everybody Else.”
The article answers my question and I agree with his views though I would like to add that no negative values infiltrated into our society with the boom as suggested by some Saudis about others.
As I see it, what we lacked was farsightedness. During and after the boom, we talked about ourselves using only superlatives. The media told us about “the largest,” “the most modern,” “the best,” “the most beautiful,” etc. etc.
We faced reality only when the specters of unemployment, poverty and the ignorance of modern technology appeared in our midst. We then discovered that our academic curriculum needed revision and the graduates of our colleges and universities needed training in order to meet the requirements of the job market.
We also learned that most of our development plans had remained on paper. We learned that we were neither sad nor happy about our failures but that we were in need of being convinced that we were humans, just like everybody else on the planet. That might be the first step toward improvement.
