RIYADH, 28 October 2004 — A cross-section of the diplomatic community and manpower recruitment agencies feel that the Labor Ministry’s drive to push Saudization will have its long-term impact in reducing manpower supplies from South Asia and Arab countries.
Already, there are clear indications of the shape of things to come. A Saudi company has been temporarily barred by the labor office in Riyadh from transferring sponsorship of employees hired from another company until it accounts for the whereabouts of its former employees who are absconding.
And, in another development, an Indian portal, YaHind.Com, has reported a sharp increase in the daily hits from 40,000-45,000 in the past to over 63,000 hits following the launch of a new feature, yahindjobs, last week.
“The huge increase is due to the fact that Indians who lost their jobs because of Saudization have been logging on to our website in search of jobs,” Syed Zia-ur-Rahman, editor and CEO of YaHind.Com, told Arab News.
Philippine Ambassador Bahnarim Guinomla, however, said there was no perceptible change in the manpower situation from the Philippines, from where 100,000 Filipinos enter the Saudi labor market annually. A majority of the Filipinos are skilled people working mainly in the health care sector as well as in banks and private-sector establishments. The number of Filipinos in the Kingdom is estimated at 700,000.
Ambassador Guinomla said he has noticed a distinctive trend with regard to Filipino nurses deployed in the Kingdom. “Those who have working experience in this country are being targeted by hospitals in the US, Canada and Ireland. As they leave for those destinations in the West, those vacancies are again filled up by new arrivals from the Philippines. So it’s kind of a relay situation,” he observed.
The south Indian state of Kerala has been the hardest hit of all, since an estimated 40 percent of the 1.5 million non-resident Indians in the Kingdom are from that state. According to a source from the Indian Embassy, the Labor Ministry’s move to reduce manpower import by 100,000 annually could affect one million Indian expatriates directly or indirectly.
Asked to give his assessment, Ali Akbar, charge d’affaires at the Bangladesh Embassy, said the Saudization drive would definitely have an impact on those areas that are targeted by the ministry. However, a majority of jobs held by Bangladeshis are those that are shunned by others.
At the same time, he pointed out, the Ministry of Health has dispatched a team to Bangladesh for the recruitment of doctors, pathologists and technicians from that country. So this kind of a controlled flow of skilled manpower is expected to continue.
However, Abdul Majeed, manager of a manpower recruitment agency from Bangladesh, said the situation was really bad for manpower agencies. “The ministry is either canceling visas or drastically reducing the number of visas. This has affected our business leading either to the retrenchment of employees or closure of business. We are in a bad shape.”
Saudi businessmen have also expressed reservations over what they perceive as the “undue haste” in forcing Saudization on reluctant employers.
At a meeting held recently at the Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce & Industry, local business leaders pointed to the difficulties facing Saudization, in particular the shortage of skilled and qualified Saudis. It was already forcing some Saudi businesses to move to neighboring states and from there export their products to the Kingdom.
