Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — There is no immediate plan to increase the rate of substituting non-Saudi government employees with Saudi citizens, Arabic daily Al-Watan quoted Civil Service Minister Sulaiman Al-Hamdan as saying on Sunday.

The minister, however, recalled that the ministry had announced in September the beginning of its plan to nationalize government jobs.

The ministry’s plan to nationalize government jobs was aimed at Saudizing 28,000 government jobs by 2020.

For this purpose, the ministry held a number of workshops with many ministries and government departments to agree on a suitable plan to gradually nationalize government jobs.

According to the ministry, most of the jobs held by non-Saudis were in the health and higher education sectors. But with the current rate of development and expansion, it would not be possible for the two ministries to provide enough Saudi staff, the Civil Service Ministry said.

Preparing a sufficient Saudi health cadre would take time, it said.

There are 1,237,081 government employees including 1,173,435 Saudis consisting of 702,193 men and 471,242 women.

There are 63,646 non-Saudi government employees consisting of 32,336 men and 31,310 women.

Al-Hamdan was talking at a recent meeting organized by the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties on the status quo of the Saudi health manpower during the coming 10 years.

“Employing citizens in place of non-Saudis in the health sector is the concern of the health minister,” he said.

Al-Hamdan said 10 teams representing 11 government agencies have been formed to review the charter and statute of his ministry.

“The teams started their work about two months ago,” he added.

He said his ministry is working with the Ministry of Labor and Social Development to unify the employment windows so as to have a single window for both the government and the private sector to make it easy for job seekers to find jobs.