Connecting People: Labor market to absorb Saudi students who studied abroad

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MORE OPPORTUNITIES: Labor Minister Adel Fakeih speaks at the Global Competitiveness Forum on Sunday. (AN photo)

RIYADH: Md Rasooldeen

Published — Monday 20 January 2014

Last update 20 January 2014 4:58 pm

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Labor Minister Adel Fakeih said on Sunday that Saudi students who had gone abroad on foreign scholarships would be instantly accommodated in the Kingdom’s labor market.
The minister was speaking at the Global Competitiveness Forum, which is being held in Riyadh for the second day in a row. He was addressing delegates during a panel discussion on “Employability: Synergizing job creation and education” at one of the sessions of the forum.
Other speakers who took part in the panel included Phillip Andrew, group chief of Working Links, Douglas Becker, founder, chairman and chief executive of Laureaute Education, Ali Matar, head of Linkedin Middle East and North Africa, and Dahlia Khalifa, regional head of the E4E Initiative for Arab Youth at the IFC World Bank Group.
The minister said that there are over 180,000 Saudi students reading at foreign universities and colleges who are expected to return home. He also noted that there are some eight million foreign workers deployed across the Kingdom, mainly in the private sector.
He also indicated that the latest Nitaqat nationalization program, which helped foreign workers legalize their status, had increased the Saudization rate by 1.5 percent.
He also said that the country has achieved a 30-percent Saudization rate in the labor market.
Plans are under way, he said, to set up a national monitoring scheme to evaluate the number of job opportunities available both in the private and public sectors and that a system would be devised to fill vacancies with Saudi cadres.
He said that Saudi graduates who have graduated from various universities found employment within a period of 18 months. “The waiting period has now been reduced to five months because of the strict implementation of the Nitaqat scheme,” he said.
The minister told delegates that his ministry had opened a website for members of the public to suggest ways of enhancing the Saudization program. “Constructive suggestions will be considered for the implementation of the labor programs,” he concluded.

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