The Ministry of labor is preparing for its biggest employment mission ever. The task calls for benefiting 400,000 women who are listed ‘jobless’ according to ‘Hafez’, a program that was created three years ago to financially support the jobless temporarily.
The biggest fear in this national mission is not the shortage of jobs. As a matter of fact, ‘Nitaqat’ is capable of tastefully swallowing double the number! The biggest concern in making this mission succeed or fail comes from Saudi society.
Everyone is keeping an eye on the offered job titles and their nature. Some jobs, that could sort out the problem of thousands of Saudi women, are still red-lined by many Saudi families. Cashier, retail, cosmetics, public relations and many similar jobs available at mega stores and huge firms are still rejected by the greater part of Saudi families.
Again, such a tremendous campaign is about to be released without any accompanying campaign to raise awareness in terms of jobs security and convince Saudi society. To tell you the truth, I cannot be very optimistic about a notable success and I have my reasons.
- The writer is media manager at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences.
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