Failure of nationalisation?
Saudi has had a nationalisation programme long before the other GCC states but it has been a complete failure. Personally I would blame the useless education system that does not prepare Saudis for the jobs the country needs and the exclusion of 50% of the work force from being able to work. You know who they are.
While the Saudi royal family and its 3000 princes cream the money off for themselves, they have let the ordinary Saudis down. On top of that they allow the mutawa to harass and oppress the local population. What price revolution?
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A social media campaign demanding better pay in Saudi Arabia has gained a massive following among citizens of the Gulf kingdom, many of whom are facing an increasing struggle to meet their daily living costs.
Supporters of the campaign on Twitter - which uses the Arabic hashtag #our_salary_does_not_meet_our_needs - have been very active over the past two months.
More than 17 million tweets carrying the hashtag were posted in the campaign's first two weeks in July, which led to it becoming the 16th most popular hashtag in any language.
However, the campaign has also attracted criticism, with some Saudis seeing it as misguided and others unhappy with the country's problems being aired in public.
Kingdom in flux
A prince meets an actress for 500,000 [dollars] and the people are chanting 'Our salary does not meet our needs', suffering from a housing crisis and asking 'How can a Saudi own a house?' The country is lost”
Tweet by osamh alotaibi
The campaign, which seeks to persuade King Abdullah to issue a decree increasing salaries, has highlighted the problem of poverty in Saudi Arabia and the concentration of its massive oil wealth in the hands of a few.
With the population having grown from seven million in the 1970s to almost 30 million in 2012, there are more and more young, educated citizens who have high expectations.
Supporters of the campaign have criticised what they see as misplaced government spending - a charge characterised by a widely circulated cartoon on Twitter depicting the fruits of a palm tree benefiting the rest of the world at the expense of Saudi citizens.
theres more to this.....
Saudization system, they have tried to apply this system in all the Saudi companies, but the locals are too greedy and lazy at the same time (We can't generalize as always), they want a very high salaries without even work, they used to the fancy life, they can't live without a private driver and without travelling, that's what the mean by "Not enough"
But What I think, everybody deserves a chance, and recently Saudi Arabia is doing a good job, it might be slow but it is still good.
Times are changing. I know Saudis who are working as security guards for 1500 SR a month and others in manufacturing plants on 3400 a month..
I agree that more needs to be done regarding education and cultural thinking..
Its their prerogative ! The mind of their king is the brain of all its people .
Lets hope so
A mutawa office was fire bombed a few weeks back, with minimal reporting in the local papers.
There is change coming to Saudi, whether the geriatric royal family want it or not.
I think that is an aspiration in many countries, in India I'm sure most graduates want to work for one of the high profile companies with good pay. However that is not always possible and so they do want they need to do to bring home the bacon and then maybe in a few years they get their dream job.
For the gulf it appears to be a cultural problem, if they don't get the job they want they sulk and ask for hand outs from the government.
Agree on Qatar and Kuwait, they don't have the same problem due to population
Saudi is a big country with a large local population , unlike Qatar or Kuwait.
The problem is that most Saudis want to work for government owned organisations like Sabic or Aramco who offer higher wages and superior training.
I suspect it is a bit of both. The government does not provide a decent education system for the jobs the economy needs, so they have to bring in expats especially in O&G and also the high expectations of Saudis themselves. Certain jobs they see beneath them, so would rather be unemployed.
Bit of a biased mish mash.
"On top of that they allow the mutawa to harass and oppress the local population."
Since King Abdullah became ruler, the Mutawa have all but disappeared.
As far as living costs. Much of the blame lies with the locals themselves. They have become used to spending more than their income. For example maids and drivers, new cars and easy loans.
Here is my favourite quote
"The Cabinet Secretary General, Abdul Rahman al-Sadhan, condemned the Twitter campaign as "a front for sedition… led by people angry that the kingdom is living in peace and stability amid the struggles that some countries are facing".
Translation.
You see what happen in Bahrain? We will defend our privileged positions and luxury life, even if it means we have to kill some of you