JEDDAH — About 18,000 women employees in private sector have applied for social insurance during the past two weeks claiming their employment was only fake Saudization and only meant to circumvent the Nitaqat system. A source said 115 social insurance offices received the applications. Jeddah topped the list with 5,000 applicants. “After the Ministry of Social Affairs unified its database with the General Organization for Social Insurance, ineligible applicants were automatically dropped from the system. Many women then came to the offices confessing their employment was merely fake Saudization and they are in need of social insurance to survive,” said the source. He also said in order to register back into the system, the applicants are required to submit a letter of resignation or a clearance note from their private sector employer. An applicant said she used to work for a company which paid her around SR500 to SR1,000 only to be counted as an employee. “The social insurance is a better coverage than the nominal salaries these companies give us. When I tried to resign, the company tried to lure me to stay by raising the salary to SR1,500. Companies are using fake Saudization to stay away from the red category in Nitaqat program,” said the applicant. Ministry of Labor spokesman Tayssir Al-Mufrij said the sudden and large number of Saudi women resigning from the private sector has definitely endangered many small and medium enterprises. “The ministry is currently updating its database to see who has dropped to the red category in Nitaqat program. If the company was in Nitaqat's green or platinum band, it might not drop to the red category. It is the small and medium enterprises that should be on alert,” said Al-Mufrij. Deputy Minister of Social Affairs Abdullah Al-Muaigil said the number of ineligible accounts found since the ministry linked its database with the social insurance organization is 107,000. “Not all of them are cases of fake Saudization. Many of them were private business owners or bank employees with high salaries,” said Al-Muaigil.
