Saudi Arabia reform drive confronts jobs challenge

Riyadh / AFP

Their heads bowed, young Saudi men concentrate on exam papers in a workshop filled with industrial machines that will help them earn a living. The students at the Higher Institute for Plastics Fabrication (HIPF) learn to manufacture plastic bags, pipes, bottles and other products, skills they immediately put to work in what the government says is a unique model.
Reducing the kingdom’s unempl-oyment rate is a foundation — and major challenge — of the gover-nment’s wide-ranging Vision 2030 reform plan unveiled in April. It aims not only to bring more Saudis into the workforce but also to give them vocational skills needed for a diversified private sector.
The HIPF and similar institutes are
a focus of the effort to transform Saudi Arabia’s labour force, ending decades of over-reliance on oil exports to strengthen the Gulf kingdom’s industrial base. The National Transformation Programme (NTP), which sets five-year targets for implementing the Vision, calls for Saudi unemployment to be cut from 11.6 percent to nine percent by 2020.
It is an attitude reflected in young Saudis like Hadi al-Harbi, an 18-year-old ex-security guard in Mecca, who never finished middle school but would like to work again — as long as the job “is comfortable and with a good salary”. More than 6.5 million foreigners were employed last year
in the kingdom, whose Saudi population is about 21 million, according to data cited by Riyadh-based Jadwa Investment.

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By 2020 the government aims to cut its payroll to 40 percent of the budget from 45 percent, while seeking to foster “a culture of high performance” among all workers in the country. Another goal of the NTP is to expand the workforce’s number of women.
The jobless rate for Saudi women rose slightly last year to 33.8 percent. The figure was nearly twice as
high for women in their 20s, according to Jadwa.
“In our culture it was hard for us to go to work or try to find our own way. It was not allowed,” says Saleema Shaker al-Malki, 30, a Riyadh mother of three who has never had a job.
She hopes the NTP can help her find suitable work “so that I can escape from the routine life… and achieve my dreams”. Improved education is a focus of the Vision 2030 plan, which calls for expanded vocational training and “rigorous standards” in basic learning.
A foreign education expert in Saudi Arabia said the reforms will take years. Saudi Arabia’s well-equipped training institutes may “talk the talk” but standards still lag, the expert said. The HIPF plastics institute is among the most advanced of about 240 schools run by the government’s Technical and Vocational Training Corporation (TVTC).
Some, like the HIPF, are partnerships between the TVTC and industry firms that run them. The TVTC says the approach is unique because students receive a job as well as training, which is conducted in English. “From Day One of training” the newly arrived students, HIPF is fulfilling Vision 2030’s goal of employment, said Khaled al-Ghefaili, the school’s executive director.
Each day starts with calisthenics and an inspection of students’ uniforms, which helps instil “discipline” and a strong work ethic, Ghefaili says at the school in an industrial district in Riyadh.
The course concludes with a job placement before graduates continue to full-time employment