Recently we reported the disapproval and sometimes open hostility that many female Saudi nurses face from their families. Some families have gone so far as to lock their daughters in the house to prevent them from going to work and mixing with men or what the families see as even worse — the horror of horrors — actually treating men. A Health Ministry official estimates that some 70 percent of nurses face family hostility because of their work.
Anyone who has been to a hospital in the Kingdom has seen the evidence with his or her own eyes. The overwhelming number of nurses are Filipino, South African, Sri Lankan — in short, from outside the Kingdom. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with employing foreigners in the health service — the US, the UK and many European countries do. But not to the extent that Saudi Arabia does. Estimates indicate that at the present rate of students from Saudi universities qualifying as medical doctors, it will take 500 years to Saudize the profession fully. And what happens when foreign doctors or Filipino nurses discover they can get higher wages and better conditions in the US or even back home? The king has spoken of the country’s being self-reliant. That goes for the health sector as well as for all others.
The shortage of Saudi nurses points up and emphasizes the present wider skills shortage in the Kingdom. The shortage has now become worrying. It undermines both the necessity for Saudization and the push for growth. Businessmen complain that they cannot get Saudis with the required skills for new industries and businesses nor can they recruit foreigners because of iqama and visa issues. How can there be a quantum leap in industrialization if the right people for the job are simply not available?
The problem goes deeper than merely creating skills. How will Saudi Arabia advance and become the industrial giant it can — and must — be if women are not allowed to play their part? Without them, the Kingdom’s economy will be severely handicapped. The hostility to women working damages Saudi Arabia. It has to go. That will certainly require education — and more. It is time to start putting those who want to keep women at home in the spotlight and the damage they are doing to the country. There is nothing in Islam which opposes women working. Was not the wife of the Prophet (peace be upon him), Khadijah, a businesswoman?
There is one other issue raised by the report: the work ethic — in this particular case nurses who do arrive but arrive late, leave early, waste time chatting on the phone to friends, putting on makeup, and in short, doing everything except working. As many readers will know, there are plenty of unreliable Saudi males in the work force as well. But the problem is not endemic. In the Eastern Province, there is a work ethic that would astound people in Jeddah or Riyadh. People are at their desks at 7.30 a.m., go home at the right time and work well in between. If it can work there, it can work everywhere.
