The Ministry of Labor announced recently that in four years it has managed to increase the level of national employment in the private sector from 780,000 to 1.62 billion. This means that the number of Saudis working in the private sector has more than doubled in only four years. Yet the biggest achievement the ministry mentioned was that it succeeded in employing Saudi women. It announced that the number of Saudi women working in the private sector increased during those four years from 70,000 to 468,000, an increase of 470 percent. If this is true, then the Ministry of Labor is qualified to receive the award for the best ministry in the world, since no ministry in the world has achieved anything similar to this. The problem is that, in my opinion, all of this is untrue and has nothing to do with reality. Most of what the ministry is talking about is just an increase in the number of people registered with the General Organization of Social Insurance (GOSI) by private companies, who manipulate the system through Nitaqat. They register stay-at-home mothers and students and those outside the GOSI system to create false numbers of Saudization, qualifying them for more foreign recruitment in accordance to Nitaqat regulations. What I really don't understand is why we flaunt such unrealistic and untrue accomplishments, which obviously don't convince anyone. If these figures were accurate, we wouldn't need to create new commissions that aim to create job opportunities for nationals in the private sector. What I also do not understand is how the Ministry of Labor – a governmental entity that should hold accountable and penalize those who manipulate labor regulations in the Kingdom – can turn a blind eye to this and consider it an admirable achievement. No one needs to confirm the fake numbers. Just take a look at unemployment rates that are still the same, and have in fact increased during the past four years, despite claims of employing 900,000 citizens in the private sector. Also look at the immense growth in foreign employment numbers in light of Nitaqat, although the need for foreign recruitment should have decreased if there was actual growth in the number of Saudi employees in the private sector. The Ministry of Labor is in desperate need of transparency in confronting the failure of its employment program. It must admit that most of what is being achieved in reality is just a new way for private companies to manipulate labor laws and rely more on foreign recruitment. The ministry must stop announcing fake accomplishments and adopt programs that actually employ citizens and increase the private sector's dependency on local employment.
