Al-Riyadh

IT is difficult to track down professions where the Saudization ratio is below the target for reasons that I am not aware of, or have not yet been made public by the authorities.

For example, there are 120,000 expatriates who work in the Kingdom as accountants. Therefore, the accountant’s profession can be classed as a category having a lot of vacant positions available for Saudi job seekers.

The important question here is: Are there any Saudis with accounting majors who cannot find jobs? I did not find any statistics regarding this matter, especially for the private sector.

We need to have complete data on Saudi accountancy graduates. How many of them are there? Where do they work? Are they all employed? If they were not employed, which means there is unemployment in the field, then why do we have 120,000 expatriate accountants in the country when qualified Saudis are available to work in the same field?

As for pharmacy jobs, the Ministry of Labor and Social Development has announced that there is a plan to Saudize this sector.

According to published statistics, the total number of pharmacies in Saudi Arabia is 8,665 while the number of licensed pharmacists in the Kingdom is 24,265.

The percentage of non-Saudis in this profession is 93.1 percent, which means there are 22,602 foreign pharmacists in the country against 1,663 Saudi pharmacists. The percentage of Saudis working in this sector is a mere 6.9 percent.

What about engineers? What about the legal profession, dentists and many others?

Between the size of the job market and the employment ratio, we need accurate data that we can use to fill the gap.

When there is an unemployed Saudi in one profession why do we allow expatriates to work in the same field? Why does it happen when the Saudi graduates can easily fill those jobs?

We need to review the number of unemployed Saudis in a certain profession and decide whether they can cover the market needs in that particular category, or whether there is a real shortage. Are the Saudi graduates capable enough to do the job? I am sure they are. If they are not, then they can be easily trained, which is not impossible.

It is painful to see many Saudis remain unemployed when expatriates work in professions that are supposed to be filled by them.

If these jobs are filled by expats who are not as qualified and as capable as the Saudis, then where is the gap and where is the problem? And if the Saudi employee is not capable of carrying out the job, then what is important is to link the education system with the needs of the job market. Our youth need the chance to prove themselves, whether in the public or private sector.