65% oppose new Emirati jobs strategy call

PRIVATE SECTOR: Emiratis should enter the private sector on their own merits rather than as part of a new strategy, say respondents. (Getty Images)

Nearly two-thirds of people who took part in an Arabian Business online poll oppose plans to give Emiratis more help to find work in the private sector.

The views were expressed in our survey after a senior human resources consultant in the UAE called for a new strategy on the issue of local people having better career opportunities in the job market.

Jasim Ahmed Al Ali, consultant at Dubai Municipality, said the Government should create three-year, five-year and 10-year education and labour strategies to ensure the country’s next wave of graduates studied disciplines that matched the demands and requirements of the labour force.

But a majority of our readers disagreed with him with 35 percent of respondents saying the country had been so reliant on expat workers to fill the private sector for so long that a new policy would not work.

A further 30 percent of people said the current quotas policy - where companies operating in industries such as banking and insurance are obliged to employ a certain percentage of Emiratis - is unfair and causes problems among workforces.

Some 13 per cent of the Emirati population is currently unemployed despite the long-running Emiratisation programme aimed at boosting the number of Emiratis working in private businesses.

Only 20 percent of respondents agreed that better education and training choices need to be given to Emiratis so they could fulfil their career potential.

While a further 15 percent argued that bringing more local people into private sector industries over the next few years would undoubtedly benefit the local economy.

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An inevitable reliance
Posted by John Doe on Wednesday 27 August 2008 at 19:56 UAE time


Do what you can, the expats will still rule and are the engine of this paradoxical country!

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