Expats fear GCC may follow Saudi's visa limit
Fear amongst expats that other GCC states will follow after Saudi Arabia forces firms to cut expatriate jobs and hire local citizens.
A decision by Saudi Arabia to limit the stay of expatriate workers to six years appears to have triggered fears among foreigners residing in the region that such a move could also be enforced by other Gulf oil producers in line with a proposal discussed at the Gulf Cooperation Council Summit in 2008.
Nitaqat (limits), the new Saudi government programme to be enforced in June, compels private sector firms in the Gulf Kingdom to recruit Saudis and provides incentives to companies which abide by the new rules. The programme will limit the stay of foreign workers, mainly unskilled, to six years for certain categories of firms while it will also ban visa renewals for non-compliant companies.
While Saudi Labour Minister Adel Faqih did not provide many details of the new decision at the time, the Ministry has since issued a clarification on the new system.
“This decision apparently targets a quantitative rather than a qualitative policy… in other words, if the decision is issued in this form, this means the Ministry of Labour is focusing on quantity not quality,” Khaled al Suleiman, a well-known Saudi economist told Al Arabiya television before the clarification was issued.
More than 18 million expatriates live in the six-nation GCC, remitting home tens of billions of dollars every year, seen by regional economists as drainage of the Gulf countries’ wealth. Unskilled labour is estimated at around 3m in Saudi Arabia and 10m GCC-wide.
The Saudi programme comes amidst reports that unemployment in the country is widening because of the private sector’s preference of the cheaper expatriate labour and the fact that the population is growing faster than the economy.
Faqih put the official unemployment rate in Saudi Arabia, the largest Arab economy, at around 10.5 per cent but noted female joblessness largely exceeds that rate, standing at nearly 26.6 per cent. Unemployment among Saudi high school graduates is also as high as 40 per cent. He said nearly six million foreigners work in the Saudi private sector, accounting for around 90 per cent of the sector’s total workforce.
“We have nearly half a million unemployed Saudi in the country while around 8m expatriates live here…6m of them work in the private sector, transferring nearly SR100 billion every year,” he said.
Faqih is expected to meet Saudi businessmen in the eastern region tonight, and the meeting will cover Saudization of jobs while the minister will explain the new programme in detail, according to Abdul Rahman al Rashid, chairman of the chamber of commerce and industry in Saudi Arabia’s eastern region.
“The decision to limit the stay of expatriate workers to six years is not clear and needs further clarification as is the case with Nitaqat,” said Suleiman. The Ministry, however, has since issued a clarification on the new system.
“Nitaqat will be an effective tool to eliminate malpractices in the labour market… We are not completely stopping visas for foreign workers but we want to find jobs for our people… Companies in the green zone will not have any problem while there is a plan to limit the stay of most expatriate labour to six years,” Faqih said.
Government data released early this year showed Saudi Arabia is suffering from very high jobless rate among young men as more than 43 per cent of citizens aged between 20 and 24 years are unemployed. The rate at the end of 2009 was higher than in 2008 despite an ongoing campaign to find jobs for the fast-growing nationals.
The report by the government statistics and information centre showed about 43.2 per cent of the Saudi males and females aged 20-24 years were unemployed at the end of 2009, nearly 20 per cent above the 2008 rate.
“This comes at a time when one million labour visas for foreign workers were issued last year,” the report said. “The private sector continued a drive to import foreign labour although nearly 111,000 Saudis were looking for jobs,” it said.
Saudi Arabia, which controls over a fifth of the world’s recoverable oil deposits, is suffering more from unemployment than other Gulf hydrocarbon producers given its large population and the slowdown in its economy in some years.
The government is now seeking help from the private sector to create jobs for Saudis. “The present situation requires strong cooperation and coordination between the government and the private sector to tackle the unemployment challenge as hundreds of thousands of Saudi continue to search for jobs,” Faqih said.
“Nitaqat is just one of 10 new programmes to be implemented in the coming stage… Our aim is to make Saudisation of jobs an advantage to companies.”
Suleiman, on the other hand, said the Ministry of Labour has been issuing successive decisions because it has been under pressure to tackle unemployment. “Under such pressures, which are often highlighted by the Saudi media, the ministry appears to be looking for a way out by presenting such ideas.”
He warned against the repercussions of that decision on the Saudi private sector, which relies heavily on “cheaper” expatriate labour. He said job nationalization in the Saudi private sector would boost cost of labour and this in turn would increase the financial burden on national companies.
Suleiman also criticized the deadline for the implementation of Nitaqat, which requires national firms to start Saudization of jobs within three months. “These decisions will hurt the private sector because they should not be presented in such a random way,” he added.
Other analysts believe Faqih’s announcement of the six-year limit is intended to block the way for Saudi-based foreigners to demand political rights, including Saudi citizenship. But Suleiman believes such demands are not “in the pipeline” on the grounds that many expatriates have been residing in Saudi Arabia for more than 50 years and have not made such demands.
He noted that the idea of replacing the foreign labour with nationals was discussed by the GCC heads of state in Bahrain several years ago.
In Egypt, Minister of Manpower Ahmed Al Burghi said he had contacted his labour representatives in Riyadh and Jeddah and was told that they have not received any official notification about the new decision.
Saudi Arabia is home to around 1.5 million Egyptian workers, who could be sent home in case that decision was fully enforced.
The new programme will give four classifications to companies including “excellent and green” to those which adhere to job nationalization and “yellow and red” to firms which fail to employ enough Saudis.
Analysts described the programme as the most radical measure taken by the Saudi government to force its private sector establishments to employ more Saudis following the failure of previous procedures.
The government in the world’s dominant oil power has not yet published details of the programme but its labour minister said it includes “generous” incentives to compliant companies and punitive measures against non-abiding firms.
“Companies which abide by Nitaqat will be moved to the green zone, which will allow them to receive many benefits, including visas and others,” Faqih told businessmen this week. “It will also allow them to get skilled labour from firms in the red zone.”
Original Source: Emirates 24/7
http://www.expat-daily.com/news/expats-fear-other-gulf-states-may-follow...
uhmmmmmmmmmmmmm
huh?
Expatriates from Asia & Africa will die of hunger. Expatriates from rest of the world will die of joy.
yes u will do so 4 sure and ur life has already changed after cuming here ur nick is strawberry shisha dnt tell me u knew abt shisha in ur home country.
yeah i know..some did say that you'll gonna miss your life here abroad when u head back home..sometimes after how many days u feel like goin back in qatar..guess..its for me to find out when its my time to go home for my vacay..
yes really one day u will hav that feeling bcz of the life style
but the missing part will never b over
tht will b dere till the time u r bak to ur place with ur luvd one's
sam..hahaha..really?hmm..i doubt it because now i really miss my family.. *sobs*
dont worry u will get use 2 it one day
and den u will nt feel like goin 4 vacations .....lols
now im thinking what i will be like after i went home for my grand vacay..according to my colleague it's much harder to go back than the first time u left ur country..i did not cry taht much when i left philippines..guess..ill cry a river when i head back here after my vacay..
we all do that ahahahahaha
Don't worry, even after spending many years away from home I still sulk after coming back from vacations.
well its nt abt u coping and pls dnt take it personly
we all copy the life style of each other and i dnt thnk dere is anythng rong in doing so as we jst try 2 comfort ourslf
so cheer
hmm..i agree..thanks..im just newbie here and this is also my first time to be away from my country and my family...on the personal level, it's hard at first but now i can say that i'm getting used to the life here..
with regards to my work here, hmm..my work is quite similar to what i have back home though sometimes it's hard esp the culture and behaviour here is way far from the one i used to..but in totally, im good with it..
It is not about you coping to the country on a personal level. It is about professionally aligning yourself with the goals & objectives of the company. Getting a feel of the local market, the culture, the competition, the working environment.. Everything.. It can't be done overnight.
yeah i know..i can easily adjust and adapt to life's changes..i'm coping with everything..
coping is easy if u make amendments based on our requirement
indeed..it will take time before we're all adjusted to the new life we have here..im quite a newbie here so im still adjusting as well as adjusting to my newfound life here,,it's not that easy though i'm coping..
Rather than restricting the number of years for one expat, they should be restricting the percentage of total expat workers.
It takes over an year to properly train a person and get him comfortable in a new country and new environment. For someone working in sales, after 6 years he has enough contacts to drive the sales without making too much efforts.
Companies have to make all this effort after every 6 years.
y r u posting such thngs and trying dem to give a hint inorder for dem to bring this into process
that will happen in thousand years before qatar will realize that's its high time for them to work their b*tts to do the works..lol..but anyway, before they decide that they no longer need us expats..i will take advantage of this opportunity to work and save before my 5 years contract will end..
nice,that only means that qatari's are getting more and more educated not that i find them uneducated,but why would they hire an engineer,managers and what not from the west?it would be nice for qatar that their people are working for them.and besides who would stay here for 6 effin years?
we'll see how they handle some headaches in engineering..
and tap out is ryt, better continue our work and some headaches...
ok...now get back to your work
lucky_go i agree with you..that's why we are here because they need us here..i just can't help but laugh at the though of seeing a local doing the arduous labours with the lowest salary ever we could imagine..
Yeah, many of us said and I don't think they can impliment this 6 years law easily. We all know how the GCC nationals attitude towards to the lower scale jobs. We can imagine they will work as labors, grocery shops, drivers...many many jobs which expatriates doing now.
Sure not possible! They can replace the person who completed 6 years and then bring a new person, but ultimately that will effect on the productivity, and the new person need some time to get adjust with here.
ah i see..hmm..but i can't wait to see one someday..at least they will know how it feels like to be in the shoes of kadama..i don't want to be sarcastic, but i just can;t help it to feel sorry for my fellow filipina whenever i saw/ read in the news that were sexually or physically abused..it does not happen only in filipina but on some asian kadama women as well..
... of course, they only work for other rich(er) Saudis and would never stoop to work for a foreign family!
i dont know if im right or wrong but i think of all the GCC states, Qatar is the richest that we can't see locals do the manual jobs..just imagine if a qatari will be the one who will do all the works that we are working here today..i can't help but raised an eyebrow if i see a local served a cup of coffee in starbucks..
really?that's quite interesting?thanks for the bit of info you shared..all my life, my perception of arabs are rich peoples who have all the means to have everything in the snap of its hand..i'm used to see kadamas coming from my country and from the neighboring countries as well..it's a weird feeling that i felt happy that saudi women do the "kadama thing" as well..
Qatar?? never.
well see how this local pipol manage themselves.
SS, not so! There ARE some Saudi housemaids, but they are not many. There is poverty there and some poor Saudi ladies have realized that if they want to put food on the table they are going to have to do it by any means necessary. Check through the archives of the Arab News, you may find the story there.
i doubt it if they will do. i just can't imagine if time will come qataris will do the serving in the service-oriented establishments and do the manual labors?given that they can't even lift a muscle even doing their own tea.
I am just wondering if they will also hire maids locally....
in qatar this will not be possible.. Cox they have very less population as compare to other GCC countries.. but may be in future the managerial staff would be mostly there citizens. after all a Qatari national security guard is taking 12000QR/month while on same post expat is taking 1200.. and same for others. so in qatar not possible.
they can't take us all out ;)
else we have option of Alter Dusty... 6 x 6 = 36 years.. and spend some time in homeland also... then Khallass..
Balders I guess you summed it up..
you mean 2022 in the far Horizon..:) still more than 11 years away...:)
MBK, no you won't! They will simply replace one Asian labourer with another at the end of his 6 years.
"The programme will limit the stay of foreign workers, mainly unskilled" - They announced this a few years ago, but stated that Managers, Doctors, and highly skilled engineers would not be affected. They just want to be seen to be doing something, but what they always end up doing is NEVER for the benefit of their people, and just screws up private sector companies: Additional recruitment fees, more visas to process, more people through the airport, etc, but the working Saudi (and I use that term very loosely) will still be hunting for a 6 hour a day desk job.
law was floated in the Minister Council some couple years back, which was opposed at that time..
I am not sure if Qatar will follow this suit, with 2022 in horizon...
Khanan i would love to see that someday here in Qatar.
Khanan thats good, do you think Kuwaiti, Qataris and Emaritis are the ones that will be opposing such laws?
you need to visit Oman, Bahrain and KSA to see GCC citizens as Taxi Driver,Heavy Duty Driver, Tour Guide, Hotel Receptionst, Salesperson and many more jobs...
Six years are more than enough to live in certain country as an expat. Multiplying 6 years with living in each GCC country will make it 36. .... Cheer
In a way thats good, Finally we will see, GCC citizens, as labourers, taxi drivers, Shop assistants etc etc..:)