Opinion

Need for an integrated employment system

February 06, 2018
Need for an integrated employment system

Yasser Al-Behaijan

Al-Jazirah newspaper

A NUMBER of government and private agencies often announce their training programs that end with employment of the trainees. Their colorful advertisements motivate young people to enlist in the training programs with the hope of obtaining a good job that would relieve them of the headache of unemployment.

At the end of the training program the agencies monitoring the activities of public and private agencies ensure that they fulfill their commitment to the trainees as declared in their advertisements.

The overlapping of responsibilities between the concerned authorities has opened the door for manipulators to cheat young men and women who run for decent jobs after receiving training. The Ministry of Civil Service is in charge of monitoring employment at the public sector while the Ministry of Labor and Social Development is responsible for employment in the private sector.

I don’t want to explain what the manipulators do to mislead public opinion. We should impose deterrent punishment on these public and private training agencies considering the grossness of the crime they commit against the society and its members. We should also take punitive measures against agencies that publish false training and job advertisements.

Most of these agencies publish such ads to mislead the public and give the impression that they are keen on employment of citizens. At the same time, they put a lot of difficult conditions and obstacles to alienate and incapacitate Saudi applicants. These companies find justification for recruitment of expatriate workers, saying they could not find qualified Saudis to meet their requirements.

Those who follow employment announcements of public and private firms will wonder seeing the huge difference in conditions and requirements for the same job. For example, the conditions for a data entry job vary from one company to another. One company will be demanding high qualifications with several years of experience while another requires moderate qualification and less experience.

This shows the chaos and confusion in the employment process due to the absence of a unified system covering public and private sectors. Public and private firms must be urged to publicize job opportunities and make their employment process transparent in order to stop fraudulent practices.

Plans for nationalization of jobs in different sectors must be carried out with the support of an integrated mechanism. What prevents us from setting up an official platform that would deal with all job opportunities in the public and private sectors?

These available jobs will be classified in accordance with their fields and the employment process should be monitored by a specialized agency, which can put uniform conditions and requirements for each job title. Companies must be asked to announce their job vacancies through this platform while applicants must be informed of incentives and benefits through an electronic system.

This will enable the employment authority to inform qualified candidates about new vacancies in public and private sectors through text messages or emails to apply for them.

I am confident that we can bring down the unemployment rate among young Saudi men and women within a few years if we can set out a mechanism to vacant jobs, combat false employment, standardize conditions for similar jobs, and establish a unified platform for publication of real employment ads.

These measures will enhance the level of transparency in the employment system and ensure adequate number of jobs for Saudi graduates in accordance with their qualifications.


February 06, 2018
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