Rashid bin Mohammed Al-Fuzan Al-Riyadh newspaper I read a recent statement by the Minister of Labor Adel Fakieh in which he said there were 2 million unemployed Saudis, 85 percent of them women. This means that the remaining 15 percent are men. If the minister's figures are accurate, we have 300,000 unemployed Saudi men. The private sector needs between 1.5 million to 2 million Saudis to replace foreigners and fulfill the Saudization program. How can we cover this gap if our unemployed males are not more than 300,000? Should we use women to close the gap? I do not know. Most important: do we really have clear and accurate statistics about the number of unemployed citizens? How old are they? What are their qualifications? Where do they live? What is the size of the labor market that is currently being dominated by foreigners? What are the existing jobs that can be taken up by citizens? We need this data for our project aimed at the nationalization of jobs. There should be clear-cut, accurate and transparent statistics about the jobs that can be nationalized, the specializations and experience they require and where they are found. There are some jobs that Saudis will not be willing to take, so we should have an accurate number of the jobs acceptable them. It is not just right that when the private sector needs more than a million jobs we will only be willing to give it to a quarter of this number. What will an investor do when he cannot find the sufficient number of Saudis to replace his foreign workers, especially as Saudization of jobs is compulsory and not an optional choice for him? I deem it imperative to create a comprehensive and thorough national database. Our existing database provides basic information such as name, date and place of birth. For instance, we have no information about who owns a private house or what the occupation of each working man and woman is. This information is not a luxury but extremely valuable for formulating national development strategies. The gathering of such data should be carried out by the Ministry of Labor and Ministry of Commerce and Industry in addition to the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority. The figures we always read do not tally. No figure is like the other. What is the reason? We lack the correct and accurate data on which to make real decisions, not fake ones.
