JEDDAH, 17 December 2004 — Unemployed Saudi youth braved cold weather, rain and rough terrain in remote areas and rushed to register their names at special centers set up all over the Kingdom for jobseekers.
The process started two days ago and will last for sometime in a move that could serve as an indication of the qualifications of the applicants and the types of jobs they seek.
From Jeddah along the Red Sea to Al-Ahsa in Eastern Saudi Arabia and from Hail in the far north to the mountainous areas of Jizan, large numbers of jobseekers continue to throng the registration centers. Some from the Farasan Island in the south spent hours on ferries battling the rough winter waters to reach registration centers on the mainland.
The move was launched by the Ministry of Labor in coordination with the General Corporation for Technical Education and Vocational Training as part of a wider Saudization drive that seeks to replace foreign workers with Saudis.
“The listing of jobseekers will enable the ministry to know the numbers of Saudi youth looking for work and their qualifications. Following the listing down of these youth they will undergo special training in certain areas before being referred to local labor offices in major cities to find work with the private sector,” said Dr. Ali Al-Ghefais, the corporation’s governor and coordinator of the employment campaign.
He said many of the applicants are not qualified to take up jobs with the private sector and need to undergo some training to prepare them for work. Extensive training courses could last for ten days after which the applicants would be directed by the labor offices now that the private sector has defined the job specifications they need.
In addition to maintaining economic growth rates that are at least sufficient to keep pace with the rise in population, the Kingdom faces the challenge of finding jobs for the thousands of citizens who enter the job market every year without disturbing the prevailing structure of the market which remains heavily dependent on foreign workers.
Official figures put the unemployment rate among Saudis at 8.2 percent, but analysts said the percentage is much higher among younger people. The inability of a youthful Saudi workforce to displace foreign workers is one of the great challenges facing the authorities, and for years has been the focus of the country’s Saudization program, whose particular focus is on youth.
A father in Riyadh brought his two sons, one of them a graduate with a college degree in petroleum engineering who has been without a job for five years, to the application center saying he wanted to have them register in the hope that they would find jobs somewhere. In some areas police have to be called in to control the crowds causing confusion among the local committees handling the registration process.
