Good or Bad News for workers ?
Interesting Wikileak regarding skilled labour shortage in Saudi Arabia.
Does this mean that workers from South Asia can now demand better salaries and benefits or will they find other markets ?
THE LABOR SHORTAGE
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4. (C) Several post contacts have detailed the difficulties they face in finding both trained professionals and low skilled laborers to staff the many large infrastructure projects underway in the Eastern Province. As a result, wages for workers from traditional sources of labor such as India and Pakistan, as well as America and Europe, are rising. A recent study concluded the Saudi Ministry of Labor's restrictions on the recruitment of overseas labor, coupled with the burdens imposed by employment sponsorship obligations have increased the salaries of workers by as much as 35 percent for skilled engineers and 10 percent for unskilled labor. One AmCit engineer working on a large and important Aramco expansion project at Khurais commented "on my part of the project, we have maybe 5-6 engineers working because everything is stretched so thin. In the united States, we'd have 50-60 engineers working on a project this size, but we just can't find the people." Representatives from leading construction firms bemoan the increased labor shortage and consequent salary escalation saying, "you used to be able to get a decent Indian engineer for $600-$800 a month. Now if you're not offering $1,000-$1,200, they won't even talk to you." Two of the Eastern Provinces leading business groups XXXXXXXXXXXX report they find it increasingly difficult to locate qualified engineers from South Asia. The increased competition among companies to hire qualified workers has encouraged the recruitment of workers with fraudulent documentation and the payment of bribes to approve the transfer of sponsorship from one company to another.
Its a good thing.
Who wants to go to Saudi? Most be a 50% premium right there.
Good News. More choice for the workers.
Bad News, soon they will be hiring from Afganistan as no other nationaility wants to go there anymore!
There are quite a no. of jobs specially for skilled workers that I personally know, but the conditions put on recruitment is making it somewhat difficult to fill those positions.
baldrick2dogs,
I think so, too!
there is another report which says there are a lot of job opportunities in Doha and people are flocking to get the same here. Wonder where are those jobs anyway?
Yeah, that's the problem with 'percentages', WK.
Bladrick spot on mate.
So the one earning 1000 QAR will now get 1072 QAR..
Great
This is so true.
Even in Qatar, most Government entities are struggling of lack of skilled man power And very few are recruited from recruitment campaigns abroad
Not many is stating the obvious. Specially With the certain “Qatarization” quota that each entity must present annually to the general secretariat of the ministries council
Sadly, our local media would happily scream “Qatarization” . But would never report on the shortage of manpower & its effect on the public services provided to the people
Yet, Qataris has the guts to complain in local media about degraded services at HMC & shortage of teachers at Government schools, slow progress in the infrastructure business…etc
"Private sector salaries likely to ‘increase 7.2% this year'". There you go.
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=414678&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16
I am used to exploitation by now and a world without it scares me.
Last week the Kuwaitis put forward a proposal to give nationality to skilled workers especially in the oil/gas sector. So, this means that there is a skilled labour shortage occuring in the Gulf.
Or it could be that nobody wants to go to KSA anymore cos it's shyte!
That's true.Some job seekers would do anything in order to get hired.Even if it were illegal means.
The interesting comment is the last one - "The increased competition among companies to hire qualified workers has encouraged the recruitment of workers with fraudulent documentation and the payment of bribes to approve the transfer of sponsorship from one company to another."
Times are changing,professionals are seeking better employment opportunities,add to that the rising cost of living.And plus,the ever growing young,highly educated local population waiting to be hired as well.