By Abdullah Bakheet
Al-Riyadh
IS a person born as a baker, plumber or car mechanic? Are the skills innate to anyone?
Every time I hear people complain about Saudization, I wonder whether replacing non-Saudi workers with Saudis is just a matter of substituting one person for another.
The foreigner working in your house might have a long and complicated story to relate. The foreigner working as a plumber might have come to your country without any skills. Because he lacked the basic skills required, he would ruin something in your house and then correct his mistake in your neighbor›s house and so on until he learned how to connect two pipes or stick two wires together using a scotch tape.
Do we ask the Saudi who wants to take the foreigner›s place to learn the same way — ruin your house and my house then correct his mistake in a third house?
Saudization of jobs has intensified and it has more or less become a racist ideology. It is as if we are waging a war against foreign workers, instead of preparing the citizens to compete with their skills.
How many training institutes for electricians do we have in Riyadh? I don›t know because I didn›t see any single advertisement of institutes that train plumbers, electricians, tailors and other essential trades.
We live in an era where every job needs extensive training, experience and work permits from the authorities. All these do not exist in Saudi Arabia.
I can can wear trousers, sit in a plumber›s shop and carry a toilet seat without anyone questioning me. When I sign a contract with a customer, my imagination makes me think that I can solve his problem. But If I couldn›t and if I ruined his house, all I would say is: «Get a life». In the long run I will definitely learn. But is this the path that we ask the Saudis to follow?
There are laws that push Saudis into the labor market in the form of Nitaqat. These laws see the national ID as the only qualification that a Saudi requires to join the labor force. Any business owner will now hire a Saudi on the basis of this lone qualification because he just wants to reach the mandatory Nitaqat level.
This is the essential outcome of the forced Saudization. We have to realize that without proper education and training, genuine Saudization of jobs will not take place.
Training alone does not make a person gain skills, but it gives him self-confidence and makes him proud of his job.
The absence of this importance phase that every Saudi should pass through has made the word «Saudization» an excuse for anyone to humbug society.
If we want to see the Saudi economy thrive, we must seek to train and qualify Saudis, not just demand employment for them.
