A friend and colleague of mine commented on an article I wrote last Wednesday on labor fees and whether we have convinced the Labor Minister Adel Fakieh that they are a bad idea. His reply was too long but I will summarize it without distorting his meaning. He said there are a number of sectors that are completely dominated by foreigners since Saudis are not willing to work in them. He gave the example of an old man who sold dates in Madinah. He has four foreigners working with him in his shop. When he was asked if he had any children, he said he had six, of whom four were unemployed. He said they are not willing to work in his shop, which opens after the dawn prayer and remains open until 10 p.m. The solution, in the opinion of my colleague, starts with raising awareness, organizing work timings and introducing incentives to encourage Saudis to work in the retail trade sector. Saudis usually do not want to work in this sector. If we left them with no choice but to work in these shops, the prices would be high for consumers and the service would be bad. It is absolutely futile to try to nationalize jobs in other sectors such as agriculture because these are areas that Saudis usually avoid. The Madinah farms are a good example of this. The sons of the owners of these farms are receiving financial assistance under the Hafiz program, while Pakistani expatriates are doing the farm work. The big crisis is when we advertise vacancies for accountants, storekeepers or salesmen to citizens. A number of graduates from colleges apply for these jobs even though they may not be qualified. Any attempt to impose them on the private sector is an impossible task. We should have accurate statistics on unemployed Saudis and their specializations. We should retrain those with degrees not required by the labor market. We should have figures on the exact number of the foreigners in each sector and should start nationalizing jobs in the sectors for which there are a sufficient number of Saudi graduates. Attempts to Saudize jobs in the sectors of cleaning and maintenance, construction and transport will be a wasted effort. Previous efforts to Saudize pharmacies did not work. If the monthly salary of a truck driver was raised to SR2,000, this would not persuade Saudis to work in this sector but would only increase transport costs. Saudis will not take jobs in these sectors even if we pay them monthly salaries of SR10,000.
