Targets young Saudi graduates RIYADH: A Japan-based multinational company announced Saturday the setting up of a SR12 million training center in Riyadh. The center will target young Saudi university graduates who would like to get technical training in engineering, assembly and maintenance of elevators and escalators, company officials said. Jiro Kurashima, president of the Mitsubishi Electric Saudi Ltd. (MILSA), told a press conference in Riyadh Saturday that the state-of-the-art training facility, now under construction near Exit 17, is part of the company's corporate social responsibility (CSR). Mitsubishi Electric Corporation Saudi partner Sheikh Aidroos Hassan Alesayi, MILSA Vice President Matheen Ahmed Sayeed and Deputy Marketing Manager Mushtaq Ahmed were also present. “We have acquired 2,700 square meters of land near Exit 17 to build state-of-the-art training facility, which will be fully operational by December 2011,” Kurashima said. He said the training center in Riyadh – which will be equipped with “all facilities,” including four elevators – will be slightly smaller than the company's facility in Japan and will offer similar training to the students. The center will have the capacity to train about 100 Saudi candidates for a duration of one year. Successful trainees will be recruited to work with the company, he said, adding that the training facility could help accelerate the company's ongoing Saudization program. MILSA, with a workforce of 718 employees, has so far achieved 15.5 percent of its Saudization goal. “The training facility in Riyadh will help MILSA to develop a Saudi workforce that is more confident, competent and qualified to take up challenging tasks,” he said. Kurashima said the company could recruit qualified workers from a number of foreign countries “but the idea of setting up training facility is to achieve greater percentage of Saudization.” Ahmed said that with the expansion of the construction industry the elevator and escalator market in Saudi Arabia is growing at about 30 percent every year. The company is engaged in installation of elevators and is currently installing 200 high-speed world-class elevators at the King Abdul Aziz Endowment project in Makkah.
