Saudi Arabia's Human Resources Development Fund (Hadaf) has announced that 1,574 Saudi women registered with the "Wusool" transport assistance program during the first week of the program. The program aims to support women employees in private sector enterprises across the Kingdom. Hadaf recently made new changes to the project, including boosting coverage and simplifying the registration process. The period of benefiting from the program has been extended from 12 months to 24 months and this is out of keenness for the safety of the beneficiaries of the Wusool program and ensuring the quality and safety of transportation service, which is to be provided through companies licensed by the Ministry of Transport. According to the new mechanism, women employees who have registered in the program can benefit from the subsidy by deducting 80 percent of the cost of each trip after the maximum limit has been raised to SR1,100 per month for beneficiaries with a monthly wage of less than SR6,000, and with a maximum of SR800 per month for beneficiaries whose monthly wages range between SR6,000 to SR8,000. The Wusool program, one of the key features of the National Transformation Program (NTP), aims to empower Saudi female workers in the private sector by increasing their participation in the employment market by providing them with subsidies in transportation costs between their homes and workplaces. Female citizens who wish to participate as vehicle drivers can join the licensed companies that are part of the program. The Wusool program covers all the Kingdom's 13 regions, namely Riyadh, Makkah, the Eastern Province, Madinah, Tabuk, Asir, Qassim, Hail, Jazan, the Northern Border, Najran, Al-Jouf, and Al-Baha. In an earlier statement, Hadaf revealed that a total of 64,577 Saudi female employees have benefited from Wusool, since the program was launched in November 2017 until the end of June 2020. Riyadh region has the highest number of beneficiaries with 28,308 followed by the Makkah region with 19,463 and the Eastern Region with 9,186 beneficiaries. — SG
