RIYADH: The Shoura Council agreed on Sunday to study the proposal to pay a monthly allowance to unemployed Saudi youths until they find a regular income.
The proposal for an interim allowance for the unemployed was taken up on Sunday under the chairmanship of Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Ibrahim Al-Sheikh on a proposal put forward by the Human Resources Management Committee.
The decision to make a detailed study of the proposal was passed with a majority of 100 votes in favor, while 20 members voted against the move.
The study is expected to enumerate the number of unemployed youth in the Kingdom and accordingly determine the period for the interim allowance and the amount of payments to be made to unemployed youths according to local labor regulations.
The house will go into details of the related problems such as financial implications and the degree of the government’s commitment to the welfare of the youths.
Salem Al-Marrie, who proposed the motion at the council, said that such a move to extend financial assistance to help the unemployed would curtail social problems among this group of people.
“Such an allowance should not be less than SR1,000 per month,” he stressed. He also pointed out that some countries allocate 1.4 percent of their income for the welfare of the unemployed. “What we are suggesting is to pay at least a half percent of our income to the unemployed sector,” he said.
Expressing concerns over this move, Shoura Council member Zainulabdeen Barrie said that there are around 500,000 unemployed Saudis and that it would cost SR6 billion annually to have such a program.
He recalled that some countries in the region attempted such welfare projects unsuccessfully.
“We have to learn from lessons in the region,” he said. “Some of the beneficiaries tend to avoid seeking employment.” In 2008, the General Statistics Department at the Ministry of Economy and Planning estimated the total number of unemployed Saudi men and women at 454,000.
About 56 percent of that number think of going abroad to find jobs while 86 percent believe it would be difficult for them to get jobs in the Kingdom, the study revealed.
As many as 66 percent of these unemployed youths believe that the presence of a large number of expatriates is the main reason for their unemployment, the study said. There are more than seven million guest workers in the Kingdom.
Forty-seven percent of the unemployed Saudis believe that the number of youths graduating from Saudi universities and colleges is greater than the number of available jobs.
