OFWs worried over ‘Saudization’ of kingdom jobs

Saudi Arabia has embarked on a “Saudization” program that requires companies in the oil-rich kingdom to hire more Saudi nationals, former Labor Undersecretary Susan Ople said on Monday.

Starting Sept. 10, the work permits of foreign workers in firms that do not comply will not be renewed, she said.

Saudi guidelines, released on June 12, set a 49-percent quota of Saudi employees in big banks, and 19 percent in commercial, media, insurance and education ventures. Some job categories, such as domestic work, have no set quotas. Some, like women’s clothing stores, have been reserved for Saudi women.

Ople, who heads the Blas F. Ople Policy Center, a nonprofit organization that assists distressed overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), said they have been receiving “frantic messages” from Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia and their relatives about the “Saudization” of the kingdom’s labor force.

She said the Saudi government has given companies three months to comply with the Saudization quotas. The campaign is in response to the reported unemployment of more than 448,000 Saudis.

“With this three-month deadline, any doubts over whether the Saudi government would indeed proceed with its Saudization program have been removed. Now the anxiety among our OFWs begins,” Ople said in a statement.

About 90 percent of the workforce in Saudi Arabia is comprised of foreign workers.

Quoting news reports, Ople said the Saudi Ministry of Labor has begun categorizing companies into “green, yellow and red.”

Those categorized as “green” have sufficiently met the desired percentage of Saudi nationals in its workforce.

Green companies will be allowed to recruit foreign workers from the yellow and red companies, or companies that have not complied with the Saudization guidelines.

“Yellow” companies, or those that have begun their Saudization programs but have yet to achieve the quota, have nine months to upgrade by hiring more Saudi nationals, Ople said. A six-year cap will be retroactively imposed on work permits of foreigners working for yellow companies.

“Red” companies are those that have not yet complied with the program at all. The work permits of their foreign workers “will not be renewed,” Ople said.

“As more Filipino workers find themselves working for companies in the yellow and red categories, the more questions they will have about their status,” Ople said.

She said this lack of specific information about the new system has prompted the Ople center, PDP-Laban represented by lawyer Koko Pimentel, and LBS Recruitment Solutions Agency led by Lito Soriano, to organize a symposium on the Saudization campaign on Thursday at Midas Hotel in Manila.

The symposium aims to bring key resource persons from the Department of Labor and Employment as well as Department of Foreign Affairs together with OFW groups to discuss the program and assess its implications on hundreds of thousands of OFWs in Saudi Arabia.

OFW families with relatives in Saudi Arabia can attend the symposium for free by reserving a seat with the Ople Center via 8335337.