Fadl Al-Buainain

Economic expert

Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — The Saudi Contractors' Authority (SCA) has claimed that about 152,000 Saudi women work in the Kingdom's construction and contracting sector.

According to statistics for the fourth quarter of 2018 released by the SCA, expatriates constituted 85.39 percent of the total number of the workers in the sector with Saudis only accounting for 14.61 percent.

More than 3 million expatriates were employed in the Saudi construction and contracting sector by the end of last year while there were about 511,000 Saudi nationals, including 152,000 Saudi women, according to the SCA figures quoted by the Arabic daily Al-Watan on Wednesday.

Economic expert Fadl Al-Buainain questioned the accuracy of the statistics about women working in the sector. He said it was true that some big contracting and construction companies might have created job opportunities for women but this number would be limited in all cases.

"Their number could be nowhere near 152,000. This is downright example of fake Saudization. What will the women do in the sector of contracting and construction?" he told Al-Watan.

The authority said the number of the workers in the sector were 4.2 million in 2017 but their number came down to 3.5 million in 2018.

It said there were 162,446 contracting and construction establishments in the Kingdom in 2018, up from 16,262 at the end of 2017. About 43,000 of them were in Riyadh, 32,000 in Makkah, 24,000 in the Eastern Province and 16,000 in Qassim.

The SCA said there were 91,000 construction companies, 43,000 for specialized construction and 1,300 for civil engineering consultation.