Ulfat Qabbani, Deputy Chairwoman of the Industrial Committee at Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI), has stressed the necessity to implement Paragraph Four of the Council of Ministers' Decision No.120 that asks authorities concerned to allocate plots of land within the city boundaries and develop them for setting up industrial projects to employ women. This came in a working paper she presented Sunday under the title “The experiment of transforming women from administrative jobs to productive industrialists” at the 6th Businesswomen's Cultural Forum that started under the patronage of Princess Hissah Bint Trad, wife of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. Qabbani recommended a unified strategy among all Saudi chambers of commerce to employ women in the industrial sector, to upgrade training quality and methods so as to meet the labor market needs. She stressed providing incentives to employers who employ women, solve their transportation problems and secure crèches for free or at nominal charge in industrial estates. She said the industrial sector was the second after the oil sector to provide the basic source of national income and so she was encouraged to enter this field. She gave an example of her experience when they set up a women's section and started employing women gradually in different sections. She stressed that her main criterion has been efficiency and it has given bright results showing how productive Saudi women can be. __
