Saudi Gazette report MADINAH – A major international conference, to be held in Madinah on Tuesday, will identify the important causes for the rising unemployment rate among university graduates and will come out with appropriate solutions, according to Minister of Labor Adel Fakieh. Prince Faisal Bin Salman, Emir of Madinah region, will open the 4th International Conference on Education and Employment organized by Madinah Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship at the Knowledge City. Several prominent figures and experts, including Fakieh, will address the two-day event, which will be held under the aegis of the Ministry of Labor, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Saturday. The conference will discuss how far the educational output from the 56-member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) matched the requirements of the respective employment markets, and will suggest ways to link the educational system and the labor market needs. More than 20 working papers on the topic will be presented by local and international experts and specialists. There will be six brainstorming sessions and they would focus on the reasons that contributed to an increase in the unemployment rate among university graduates in OIC member countries. It would recommend giving orientation for students to attend specializations for which there is a huge demand in the labor market, spreading awareness among the younger generation about technical courses, and exploring the prospect of working out joint initiatives and strategies among OIC member states to address unemployment through offering more job-oriented courses. Fakieh said that the conference will also focus on working out model university curricula and review the traditional relations between universities and society, in addition to working out strategies and plans to address unemployment as well as the ignorance of culture among the graduates. He said that the recent initiatives and programs, launched by his ministry, were instrumental in creating more job opportunities for Saudis as well as in increasing the number of working women, besides raising the social security level. Highlighting the Kingdom's achievements in the new Saudization drive, Fakieh said that so far a total of 411,000 Saudi men and women have been employed in the private sector. “We will continue the Saudization drive more vigorously until the unemployment problem is solved and foreign workforce is replaced with Saudis,” he added.
