This refers to the front-page story on Labor Ministry’s new directive, asking Saudi owners to personally manage their legally and commercially sponsored small and medium sized enterprises. While any effort to explore more employment opportunities for Saudis needs to be backed, this particular move has both practical and moral hazards.

These small businesses, popularly known as baqaalas or cold stores, are open for long hours and provide excellent support to neighborhoods. Many Saudis own more than one such stores and many risk their investment with unknown expats, therefore, they do manage by visiting them for sometime on a daily or weekly basis.

These neighborhood stores are propping up as the economy and population are seeing a boom. These Saudi owners are in many ways similar to other big Saudi businessmen who operate many big businesses, employing thousands of both Saudis and expats. How can we discriminate against those who operate SMEs while we allow big business houses doing the same? Such directive, if implemented, will mean many such outlets will have to be closed or sold at low prices and the new owners will face the same problem of putting in long hours to run their businesses. Disturbing these market forces of supply and demand will accelerate inflationary pressures, causing more social stress.

The existence and growth of these SMEs are results of the huge and fast growth of the economy. Saudi Arabia is not the only country that hosts a huge foreign labor work force, there are many other countries including the West. However in most Western countries, skilled workers are given permanent resident permits. Saudi owners of SMEs would rather quit the business but not man these small-sale outlets for long hours.

Saudi Arabia has been blessed with huge resources, which make it both affluent and powerful in all aspects of the nationhood. There are already many Saudi youths who are working as clerks during office hours and few hours driving taxis to maintain their standard of living. But these same youths will not man these SMEs, which need completely different work ethics i.e. patience of waiting and servicing customers, procuring supplies and merchandizing. — Seif A. Somalya, Jeddah