By Dr. Jasser Al-Harbash
Al-Jazirah
OCCUPATION does not always refer to foreign military presence on streets. There is an obvious occupation and a hidden one. When 80 percent of production and services in our country is performed by expatriate workers, we call this hidden occupation. We are occupied. The Saudi who takes SR5,000 a month as a reward for allowing the expatriate worker under his sponsorship to run a grocery store, we call this economic occupation. It is a sad thing to see a Saudi violating the laws of the country.
The same thing applies to gas stations, polyclinics, pharmacies, beauty parlors, hotel and hospital receptionists, airline reservation officers, etc. All these services are controlled by expatriate workers.
I recently read a statement made by Prince Khalid Bin Abdullah, Shoura Council member, who said the national economy has created 12 million jobs and these jobs continue to be occupied by expatriate workers while 700,000 Saudi men and women remain jobless. He also said expatriates constitute 30 percent of the Kingdom’s population, which is a high percentage by international standards.
We need to stop saying that we do not have qualified Saudis who can do the jobs done by expatriate workers. If we look at the infrastructure projects, we will see that they were and continue to be implemented by expatriate workers. But what are the results? Cities have sunk because of torrential rains. Let us ask ourselves why Sri Lanka and Indonesia do not sink when such rains pour down over there.
The walls of our universities and airports cracked and leaked water, the tunnels were filled with water, the street asphalt was ruined and the streets are filled with potholes, fake consumable goods and medications are sold in our markets, why? How can this happen when we have tens of thousands of highly-qualified Saudis who remain unemployed? We have qualified Saudis who are doctors, dentists, technicians, computer engineers, etc who, because of unemployment, now sell tea on the streets and work in petty restaurants in order to survive.
Let us ask ourselves: Would the infrastructure projects completed in a worse way if Saudi young men and women had supervised the implementation process? I do not think so. We made a mistake when we did not rely on qualified Saudi men and women over the past decades.
The other thing we should reconsider is that we have 12 million expatriate workers, six million of them do easy jobs that one can learn quickly. Most of them work in the consumable and services sector.
