DAMMAM: The Ministry of Labor intends to lift ban on 70 professions restricted to Saudis – for companies in the excellent zone having achieved the required percentage of Saudization, Labor Minister Adel Fakieh said here Saturday. The updated zones system, classified according to the adherence to the Saudization plan, will be issued soon, he said adding that the Human Resources Development Fund will issue incentives and punitive measures for Saudi workers. These measures assure incentives for Saudis to continue in a job or penalize them for abandoning their work places. The ministry, he said, is in the process of issuing a guide for the issuance of visas and which also specifies the duties and rights of the companies to ensure transparency. According to the guide, companies that achieve 17 percent Saudization can obtain visas within 10 days. “Companies whose visas are not issued on time can sue the ministry,” he said. The ministry, Fakieh said, will approve a new, decentralized mechanism of issuing visas and approve support letters from government authorities regarding this. The number of visas will not be reduced for companies that get support from these authorities, he said. The issuance of all the visas applied for, however, does not mean that work permits would also be issued for these visas, the minister said. The issuance of work permits is linked with the percentage of the Saudization in the companies, he stressed. The Ministry of Labor, he said, is working hard to develop sufficient tools necessary for recognition of “distance work” jobs and include them within the zones system. A committee for developing distance work is in the process of formulating regulations related to those jobs, he said. Fakieh called on the chambers of commerce to cooperate in laying down controls to ensure that there is no tampering with the system, boost credibility and prevent depriving companies with genuine needs. He said his ministry has agreed with social insurance institutions to register part-time employees in their databases so a part-time worker is counted as half a full-time employee. He said the ministry is currently studying numerous short- and long-term initiatives related to Saudi nationals replacing expatriate workers. With regard to long-term solutions, the Ministry of Labor has taken into consideration that the graduates must meet the labor market's needs in terms of type, quality and numbers besides creating job opportunities through coordination with government authorities and upgrading the standard of education and vocations. In two years, the Ministry of Labor has issued more than two million visas for expatriate workers, he said, stressing that the zones system was created with consideration of the difference of opinion between job-seekers and the private sector, with each side blaming the other for the rise in unemployment. He said the zones system has been laid down to stimulate companies to Saudize their jobs and that it is a practical, realistic and fair system. There has been some confusion about the zones system and businessmen have said they look forward to seeing it in action so they can see its strengths, weaknesses and practicality. Under the new system, private-sector companies will be classified in either the green, yellow or red zone, according to the number of Saudis they employ. Green companies will receive several advantages such as recruitment from foreign countries and the transfer of employees in the yellow and red zones without their employers' consent. Companies in the yellow zone that do not fulfill Saudization conditions will need to correct their status in order to get their workers' iqamas renewed. Iqamas of foreign workers for red zone companies will not be renewed at all, regardless of how long the employees have been in the Kingdom. The new measure does not apply to household workers, whose iqamas would be renewed automatically. Fakieh expects most of the 800,000 enterprises in the Kingdom to enter the green zone. Those enterprises will be allowed to change the professions of their expatriate employees, except for professions restricted to Saudis, he added. Implementation of the computer system will begin after Eid Al-Fitr, some time after the first week of September, and it will be the guarantee for monitoring all enterprises; 99 percent of the work will be through the system, Fakieh said. The system, which will reject transactions by enterprises in the red and yellow zones, will be available for processing transactions of companies in the excellent and green zones, the minister explained. All the initiatives and regulations that will be issued are the result of 40 workshops held in different regions of the Kingdom and include ideas presented by the private sector, he said. The Ministry of Labor concluded from those workshops that the private sector suffers from 65 problems that will be solved for companies in the excellent and green zones, he added.
