Okaz / Saudi Gazette RIYADH — The Shoura Council has strongly criticized the Human Resources Development Fund (Hadaf) and said since its establishment about 16 years ago, the rate of unemployment had gone up from 8 percent to 11 percent. Hadaf on Monday presented its annual report to the council for discussion and approval. A number of members described the report as a figure with no real or meaningful contents. "The report did not contain any financial statements but only presented some indicators such as that the fund's revenues reached SR17 billion and its expenses were12.8 billion," said Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, a member. He said the fund's main building in Riyadh has three stories accommodating the companies, which supply it with studies and consultations, but the report came out devoid of any mention of the advice provided by these companies. Prince Khaled Al-Saud described the performance of the fund's Taqat program, which is concerned with the employment of Saudis, as substandard and said out of about 800,000 job seekers the program was able to find jobs for only four percent of them. Saud recalled that the job seekers consisted of about 81,000 males and 700,000 females and said the fund was able to provide jobs for about 25 percent of the men and only two percent of the women. "Those who received financial assistance from the fund were much more than those it had been able to employ," he added. The Prince said the fund provided training to about 250,000 young Saudi men and women at the cost of more than SR5 billion spending about SR20,000 on the training of every individual. He questioned: Did the training provided by the fund ensure the trainees with the required skills needed by the labor market? Jabran Al-Qahtani said Hadaf's report was void of any indicators of its performance and said the fund did not specify the number of the Saudis who are now settled in their jobs. Abdullah Al-Jighaiman said about 33 percent of the Saudis trained by the fund have dropped out of their private sector jobs to join the government. Mohammed Al-Rihaili asked the fund to find a permanent solution to the delay of the salaries of the Saudi teachers in private schools and warned that these teachers might seek jobs in the government schools. In order to encourage the private schools to employ Saudi men and women teachers, the fund has made it a commitment on itself to pay about 50 percent of their salaries. Sultan Al-Sultan called for making the fund a ministry for the development of human skills and said this was not an uncommon practice in advanced countries.
