Fussy graduates creating job shortages, claims Saudi’s MoH

Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health (MoH) has blamed picky graduates for a suggested shortage of vacancies for newly qualified dentists.

Recent graduates have reported a scarcity of positions in major metropolitan areas and have complained to local press that choice jobs are distributed to graduates with personal connections, rather than through official channels.

In contrast, said Dr Mohammad Al Rifai, director of dental services, Ministry of Health figures suggested the Kingdom still had a long way to go in filling its shortfall of dental services.

"There are a lot of Saudi dentists graduating and there are still lots of vacancies for them to get jobs," he told Middle East Dentist.

"There are about 8,000 dentists in the country, and Saudis only make up about 15-20% of those. We will meet the demand in the near future but I am surprised by people saying that they can't find jobs."

Al Rifai conceded that job selection was less open than in previous years, but said this could be explained by the return of more qualified dentists from overseas study.

"We hired them as general dentists and we send them abroad for higher education. When they come back they come to work in these centralised locations."

Dr Sultan Al-Mubarak, a consultant periodontist at Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Humanitarian City, Riyadh suggested the problem lay more with location.

"There is no shortage," he said. "It's just that most of the Saudis that are newly graduated would like jobs within the bigger cities."

Graduating dentists are limiting their own employment horizons, agreed Dr Hassan Halawany, council secretary of the Saudi Dental Association and faculty at King Saud University, College of Dentistry, Riyadh.

New dentists must realise that the goal is to improve oral health across the entire Kingdom, he added.

"The country is not just Riyadh and Jeddah, the country has many cities," he said. "They might not be able to get a job in their preferred city - but this is normal."