Body Formed to Oversee Hiring of Foreign Workers
Arab News

A regional committee to coordinate recruitment of foreign manpower in the Gulf region was formed in Riyadh on Tuesday, Saad Al-Baddah, chairman of Saudi National Recruitment Committee (SANARCOM), said.

The first meeting discussed various issues faced by the recruitment companies in the Gulf from manpower exporting countries, he said.

“The new committee will prepare a working agenda based on the experiences from the six Gulf (Cooperation Council member) countries,” he said.

He indicated that the new committee would form a common strategy to meet the changing policies in manpower supply from these countries.

“Initially, we want to ensure that the recruitment policies of the member countries are in accordance with their respective local regulations,” he pointed out, saying that “we will try to unify several of our activities in the process to get quality manpower to ensure value for the money spent on their labor.”

Around 12 million foreign workers are working in the Gulf, which include seven million from the Kingdom, he said, adding that their average salary is $320 a month. Regarding recruitment procedures in the Kingdom, Baddah said that it had started importing manpower from Vietnam.

“We are waiting to recruit more people from Nepal when the new parliament settles down in Katmandu,” he said, noting that the Kingdom is now looking for more human resources from African countries, such as Kenya and Ethiopia. The other two members of the committee include Ali Al-Shola, chairman of the Bahraini National Recruitment Committee and Abdulaziz Al-Ali, chairman of the Kuwait Association for National Recruitment.

Foreign Firms ‘More Willing’ to Hire Women
Arab News

A recent study carried out by King Saud University in Riyadh found that the rate of Saudis employed by foreign companies or in joint venture projects in the Kingdom did not exceed 9 percent.

The study, published by Al-Jazirah newspaper yesterday, also showed that only five percent of the key positions in these projects were held by Saudis.

While criticizing the low level of Saudization, the study noted that foreign companies in general were more cooperative and willing to employ Saudi women than local ones.

The study appreciated the fact that the foreign companies were training young Saudis and giving them a chance to develop their skills and qualifications. As the study explained, training programs would be of great benefit to citizens and the country alike.

The study stressed the importance of the role that these companies could play in providing more job opportunities as well as developing the country as a whole. However, it pointed out, Saudis were not even interested in taking technical jobs.

The study made a number of recommendations, beginning with a call for more incentives to encourage foreign investment. This would not only boost the economy but most importantly would help the Kingdom to engage global competition, it said. It would also help Saudis to obtain more skills and qualifications and be able to replace foreign workers.

This could only be achieved through intensive training courses and rehabilitation programs, the study said.

Financial Sector Attracts Saudi Job Seekers
Gulf Today

The finance sector is the hottest sector for job seekers in the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia. With the rapid growth in the banking and financial services companies in the Gulf, there is an employment boom in this sector, according to latest statistics by GulfTalent.com, an online employment service for the Gulf region.

During the last quarter of 2005, "banking" was the single most popular keyword searched for by job seekers online, while other related keywords included insurance, finance, risk, compliance, Takaful and "private equity". Overall one in every eight online job searches was related to the banking sector, according to GulfTalent.com.

The increase in supply of job applicants for banking is met with an equal demand by the prospective employers. Several banks have reported high growth projections in the number of employees. "There has been an increase in the number of employees we recruited over the past two years and this increase is more pronounced last year," said Saud Sabban, head of human resources at the National Commercial Bank. "The increase is mainly in support of the expansion plans of the bank, and the shift of our conventional banking to Islamic banking," he added.