JEDDAH — A Saudi businessman on Sunday defended the SR200 monthly labor fee levied on foreigners working companies that did not meet Saudization targets and said some Saudi businessmen have misunderstood its objectives. Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel said: “The decision was not surprising. It was previously announced by the government. “It is a common practice in most countries of the world.” Jameel, chairman and president of Abdul Latif Jameel Co. Ltd (ALJ), said the sons and daughters of a country should take the jobs available in their homeland, not the foreigners. “What is happening in Saudi Arabia and the other GCC countries in this respect is not right,” Jameel told a local newspaper. He said the labor fee would tighten the grip on tasatur (where foreigners run and control businesses registered in the names of Saudis) and increase the rate of spending in the market by Saudi citizens. “The decision will create new job opportunities for at least 448 Saudi men and women who are currently unemployed.” Jameel said about 86 percent of the 7.2 million foreigners in the Kingdom are working in jobs that are not suitable for Saudis. He added that the monthly salaries of about 85 percent of these foreigners are less than SR2,000. “Increasing the costs of recruiting of foreign labor will help change these jobs from low-income professions into jobs with good salaries that will attract Saudis and hence help end the problem of unemployment.” Jameel also commended the Nitaqat program recently launched by the Labor Ministry to increase the number of Saudi employees in the private sector and said it would greatly organize the recruitment of foreign manpower. “What the ministry has accomplished in the last two years is equal to what it would normally achieve in five years.” Jameel hoped the ratio of Saudi employees in the private sector would not be less than 80 percent and asked all businessmen to pursue the nationalization of jobs in their companies. He also urged Saudi businessmen to do whatever they could in their power to make the Saudization process a success. Jameel, who is also chairman of ALJ Social Responsibility Initiatives, said his company has spent more than SR1.2 billion during the past 10 years to sponsor the projects of productive families and finance small enterprises. He said in 2012 alone the company created job opportunities for more than 55,000 Saudis. “I am hoping to create 500,000 jobs in the very near future in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world.” He revealed his company started its programs to create job opportunities for young Saudis in 2002 when it enabled them to buy their own vehicles to run as taxis through interest-free installments. “We did not even charge them any commission to encourage them to run their own private businesses.” He said the company later introduced a program of vocational training that would end in employment. “In 2004 we launched our small loans program to serve productive families and in 2007 we assembled all these activities under the roof of ‘Bab Rizq Jameel'.” Jameel said young people in the Kingdom accounted for about 60 percent of the population and said their employment was the joint responsibility of the government and the private sector. “The ratio of unemployment in the Arab countries is 27 percent at present, which is double the world rate of 13 percent. “If the problem of unemployment is not solved soon there will be 50 million unemployed people in Arab countries.” Quoting statistics issued by the Ministry of Labor, Jameel said there are 448,000 unemployed Saudi men and women while there are 8 million foreigners, of whom about 6 million are employed by the private sector making annual remittances of more than SR98 billion. “The unemployment rate is 10.5 percent, while it is 28.4 percent among women, of whom more than two thirds are holders of university degrees. “We should all come together to find a solution to this problem and to design the educational syllabuses according to market needs.” He said the authorities should closely coordinate among themselves to control the issuance of recruitment visas to control the foreign labor market.
