By Abla Morshed
I RECENTLY read a story that has caused a big debate. It was about the appointing of a non-Saudi woman as a public relations consultant at a local company. Officials of the National Anti-Corruption Commission got involved because corruption had taken place. According to civil service rules, a non-Saudi is not allowed to fill a vacant job that could be taken by a Saudi. Saudi candidates, who were not selected for the job even though they had the correct qualifications, must have leaked the story. I am sure that there are thousands of similar cases in the private sector where companies give priority to expatriate workers over Saudis.
The main reason for this is that the Ministry of Labor and Social Development calls for Saudization but does not ensure that businesses follow instructions and replace expatriate workers with Saudis. Another problem is that labor regulations have articles that allow businesses to dismiss Saudis from work. In fact, some of the regulations are contradictory and are not in the interests of our citizens and country. Many companies fire Saudis to cut down on costs, reducing the percentage of Saudis in the sector to 16 percent compared to 84 percent non-Saudis, according to the General Authority of Statistics for the Saudi workforce in 2015.
Everyone must realize that only Saudi citizens can advance and develop our country. It is only Saudis who were born and raised here who will make this happen. When I say Saudi, I mean everyone who has Saudi citizenship regardless of origin or ethnicity.
In the early 1970s, we had many non-Saudis who held senior positions in the public and private sectors. That was acceptable and nobody opposed it for the simple reason that we had no other option and had to resort to employing non-Saudis to do a lot of things. There is nothing wrong with using non-Saudis; after all we are all human beings and we need to learn from one another.
However, the strange and painful thing is to continue using non-Saudis despite the past 45 years of government spending on education, scholarships, training, etc. I am sure we have well-qualified Saudis who can fill senior positions in the private sector. The fact that some college graduates are not good enough to do certain jobs does not mean that all of them are poorly qualified to lead the development process of the country. We have well-respected Saudi professors and academicians, and our universities continue to graduate well-qualified students.
Therefore, we have to focus on those well-qualified people and give them the opportunities they deserve to prove themselves. If we look at Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea, we will see that the citizens of these countries have worked to achieve development. These nations are developing, training their people, ensuring that all citizens get equal opportunities and that the market is offering fair competition to everyone regardless of ethnicity, religion, etc.
