JEDDAH, 25 December 2005 — The Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) hosted a workshop yesterday on the Saudi employment strategy project under the Ministry of Labor. About fifty men and women members of the JCCI, representatives from the ministry, the Human Resource Fund and academics discussed the positive and negative aspects of this ambitious strategy which attempts to address the various aspects of employment in Saudi Arabia. Dr. Abdul Wahid Al-Homaid, deputy minister of labor for planning and development, was present but only, as he told Arab News, to listen to opinions and feedback which would be taken into consideration and included into the strategy.
“I’m very happy with the points brought up by the businessmen here. Many of the observations made are the same as those of other businessmen in the Kingdom and we are aware of the criticisms of the current system,” he said. The workshop was held last week in Riyadh and will be presented tomorrow in Dammam and later in Hail and Abha. “The purpose of holding the workshop in five chambers is to incorporate the views and suggestions made into one coherent strategy. The Ministry has decided to ask a Saudi consultant to design the strategy instead of bringing a foreigner who does not know the nature of our society. We also wanted to get feedback from the private sector and the chambers before we implement the strategy,” he said.
The strategy aims at full employment of Saudis and raising their standard of their productivity over the next 25 years. It was presented by Dr. Ihsan Bu-Hulaiga, president of Joatha Informatics Consulting Center. The strategy has been prepared to deal with the challenges that the Saudi labor market is facing and to overcome its structural flaws in order to minimize them and increase the competitive level of the national labor force. It has objectives for the short term (two years), medium term (three to five years) and long term (six to 25 years). All will be met by setting goals and establishing mechanisms for achieving them.
The objectives are: Full employment of the national labor force, continued increase of national human resource contributions and raising the standards of the local labor force’s productivity. The framework for achieving the objectives is to control unemployment by taking into account the different economic and social aspects and working at maintaining full employment. The strategy addresses many of the key issues for the success of any employment drive, including the education system and curriculum, training, labor laws and regulations, salaries and social attitudes. The strategy identified 26 policies in the short, medium and long-term with specific work plans that need to be implemented in order to achieve the objectives.
