Gulf States Try to Steer Jobs to Citizens
Employers Resent Efforts Intended to Fight Unemployment and Radicalization

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 25, 2008; A13

MUSCAT, Oman -- Coffee shop manager Lalit Jadeja groaned as white-robed Omani officials swooped down on his Filipina cashier at one of the largest shopping malls in this Persian Gulf kingdom. It was the Omanization squad.

Why, the officials demanded, was a foreigner instead of an Omani citizen working the cash register?

The officials were enforcers of Oman's campaign to put its young citizens in jobs occupied mostly by cheaper foreign workers. Similar programs, costing millions of dollars, are being tested across the oil-rich Gulf region, where many are concerned that frustrated young people are susceptible to radical ideology.

But economists and other analysts say the programs have made little difference so far. In some cases, as in hiring quotas for citizens, government efforts have angered employers who say the campaigns have fostered a sense of job entitlement among local young people.

Their voices rising in the coffee shop, the Omani officials and Jadeja argued labor law and hiring quotas over a lighted display case of cinnamon buns and niçoise salads.

"It has to be fixed," Jadeja, one of millions of Indians who have come to the Gulf for jobs offered by its thriving oil economies, said later. "It will be an atom bomb one day."

The Middle East has the world's highest percentage of young people -- 30 percent of its population -- and the highest percentage of unemployed youths -- 25 percent. The trend is particularly pronounced in the Gulf region, where dependence on oil has stunted the growth of private sectors over the years. In Saudi Arabia, for example, about 30 percent of young people are unemployed.

The young people hired to meet the quotas "are often perceived as a burden, and companies consider the salaries paid to them as a form of tax," said Nabil Ali al-Yousuf, vice chairman and executive president of the Dubai School of Government, a public policy institute in the United Arab Emirates.

"I think we have a choice with these 100 million youths that are growing up now" in the Middle East, Yousuf said. "They can be 100 million opportunities or 100 million ticking time bombs."

Two of the main problems are schools that fail to prepare students for the needs of the labor market and societies that see public-sector jobs as the only ones with the prestige and security worth going for.

In Syria, a country not in the Gulf but representative of the Muslim Middle East overall, 60 percent of unemployed young people said they would rather remain jobless than take a job in the private sector, according to a survey cited by the Dubai center.

In the Gulf region, oil wealth has compounded the problem.

In the United Arab Emirates, which has leveraged comparatively modest oil reserves to become a financial powerhouse, foreigners made up 98 percent of the private workforce last year.

With 4.5 million foreign workers and fewer than 1 million citizens in the Emirates, Emiratis long ago became a minority in their own country. Fearful of worker unrest, the country has resorted to conducting mass deportations and setting up labor camps.

Even in Oman, one of the less affluent Gulf countries, oil profits are wiping out a culture of hard work.

In the middle of the desert, for example, an Indian stood alone near his home in a cargo crate. The man, wearing floppy leather sandals, a plaid shirt and a fuzzy pink towel, is one of the Gulf's new pool of subcontracted camel-herders -- tending camels for a Bedouin family that had retreated to air-conditioned comfort on a government-provided plot of land, several Omanis explained.

Fearing the risks of putting so much of their countries' economies into the hands of foreigners, governments and foundations in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and elsewhere began funding job training and business start-up programs in 2000.

Most governments have also adopted hiring quotas. In Oman, the law mandates that Omanis make up at least 50 percent of every private employer's workforce.

Saudi Arabia has put as much effort as any Gulf country into trying to get young people to work. This year, public service ads on Saudi television sought to rally capitalistic spirits -- such as one ad showing a sweaty hand clutching Saudi banknotes.

The Saudi labor minister, Ghazi al-Ghosaibi, drew snickers and praise in June when he shucked the usual flowing headdress of Saudi men for the ball cap and vest worn by waiters at the U.S.-based food chain Fuddruckers.

Beaming, Ghosaibi served up burgers for surprised customers at a branch in Jiddah. As the news cameras pressed in, Ghosaibi cited Islamic teaching about all honest work being honorable.

More Gulf young men are starting to pop up behind the counters at mall coffee shops and in other entry-level jobs, Gulf residents say, although they remain a novelty in some countries.

"I never imagined that, that one of my friends or a roommate would go for a job like that," Ahmed al-Omran, a 24-year-old pharmacy student and blogger in Saudi Arabia, said by phone.

Omran recalled the day last year when he and his friends flocked to see a sight they had never seen before -- a roommate who had taken a job and was waiting tables.

The wonder of it struck him still. "It was really heartwarming, to go to a restaurant and see someone like you, a familiar face," Omran said.

Yousuf, at the Dubai center, welcomed the emerging work ethic but said a better education system would equip young Gulf men and women for more skilled positions.

At the coffee shop in Muscat, Oman's capital, Jadeja flipped through the country's labor code in his cubbyhole of an office. He cited legal codes allowing Omanis generous leaves for studies, pilgrimages, funerals and other benefits.

Jadeja complained about a hiring quota that he said was compelling some employers to give young Omanis paychecks to stay home, just to have them on the payroll.

Behind the coffee shop's front counter, Rashdi bin Mohammed, a 21-year-old Omani, spoke sadly of trading his dream of becoming a pilot for a job serving lattes.

Bin Mohammed rejected the only public-sector jobs -- policeman or soldier -- he said were available to him as an Omani without "wasta," or connections. He said he shrugged off the looks and comments from friends who would rather keep accepting money from their parents than take an entry-level job.

"They just don't have the will to strive, to better themselves," he said.

Correspondent Faiza Saleh Ambah in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.