Okaz/Saudi Gazette Guilty firms face fines, ban on filing recruitment applicationsABHA — Five large companies tried to circumvent Saudization laws by falsely claiming they hired 576 Saudi employees and other companies are suspected of taking similar illegal measures, sources told Okaz/Saudi Gazette. The five companies that fraudulently registered the names with the General Organization for Social Insurance, face fines of up to SR200,000 and they will be banned from filing recruitment applications for five years, the sources added. The developments will lead to uncovering other cases of fake Saudization in several private companies in different regions in the Kingdom, the sources said. Meanwhile, Adel Fakieh, Minister of Labor, currently visiting Paris, told Okaz/Saudi Gazette that stores selling women's accessories and goods must hire Saudi females or face closure. To ensure that companies do not circumvent Saudization laws, the Ministry of Labor will require private sector companies to use a fingerprint system linked to the ministry through Labor Offices throughout the Kingdom, according to sources. All Saudi employees will have to have their fingerprints scanned when they go to work, which will prevent companies from registering fake names of Saudi employees, sources said. Saudi employees' data will be updated every six months, their information will be registered and a copy of their IDs will be made and stored in the Ministry of Labor's computers, sources added. As companies work to hire more Saudi employees, an Internet-based effort to facilitate the process has been successful, said Sultan Bin Muhammad Al-Saree, spokesman of the Human Resources Development Fund (Hadaf), which operates Hafiz, a national program to help Saudis find jobs. Of the 1.2 million people who accessed the Hafiz website, more than 500,000 registered their CVs with the program. The latest statistics showed that Riyadh, the Eastern Province and Makkah registered the highest percentages of access to the site via the use of secret codes sent to applicants, he said. Access to the site in those three areas ranged between 15 and 21 percent; in Qassim, Madina and Asir, it ranged between 10 to 15 percent; and in Jizan, Najran, Tabuk and Hail, between 1 to 10 percent, he added. __
