By Salem Sahab
The General Organization for Social Insurance has finally witnessed the crisis faced by Saudi employees in the private sector. Their latest report states that 48 percent of Saudi employees in the private sector get paid less than SR3,000.
It also confirms that Saudis in the private sector number no more than 1.7 million while there are more than nine million non-Saudis. This means that they are five times more than Saudis in number. If we add maids and domestic workers without formal residency permits then the number of expatriates would exceed 11 million.
There are more than 200,000 Saudis who earn more than SR10,000 every month in the private sector. They represent only 12 percent of the Saudi workforce. According to the report, which is published on the organization’s website, there are 304,000 employees whose salaries range between SR3,000 to SR5,000. When we add them together, we find that some 1.163 million Saudi employees earn less than SR5,000. We also find that 60 percent of these are males and 40 percent are females. This means that the number of males who get salaries less than SR5,000 exceeds 700,000.
How can an employee with such a low salary be able to afford the expenditures associated with being head of a household? How much will he spend on rent? How much will he spend on clothes, food, transportation and medicine?
Every individual plans to get married; yet the number of single women is increasing. This is because of the high cost of living, which is resulting in people not getting married.
If society does not recognize this serious crisis then there will be real corruption.
