JEDDAH — The Balochs residing in the Kingdom will get concessions in the Nitaqat Saudization program, sources in the Ministry of Labor and Social Development were quoted as saying by Al-Watan Arabic daily on Saturday.
A Baloch resident will be counted as a quarter point in the Nitaqat Saudization program i.e. four Baloch workers will be considered as one expat.
They will be treated in a similar manner as the previously announced nationalities including Burmese, Palestinians holding Egyptian travel documents and Turkmenistan nationals.
Four expatriate workers from any of these categories will be counted as one expat worker in the Nitaqat program on condition that workers from these categories do not exceed 50 percent of the total number of employees in a firm.
The sources said the objective of this decision is to encourage private sector firms to employ members of these communities instead of recruiting workers from abroad.
Balochs in the Kingdom are divided into three categories: Those holding Saudi nationality, those without any nationality but holding valid iqamas (residence permits) which identify them as Baloch nationals, and those holding Pakistani nationality who settled in the Kingdom 40-50 years ago.
Balochs mostly reside in the Eastern Province. Some of them have shifted to work in industrial cities like Jubail and Ras Tannourah.
Most of these Balochs are working in government jobs and in oil companies.
The Balochs in Riyadh and Qassim work in agriculture farms and are involved cattle herding.
In Jeddah, Makkah and Taif they work during the Haj season either in shops or as bus drivers.
The Baloch are a people who live mainly in the Balochistan region of the southeastern-most edge of the Iranian plateau in Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, as well as in the Arabian Peninsula.
