More GCC nationals needed in industrial sector - study

INDUSTRIAL GROWTH: More GCC nationals are needed to fill jobs in projects such as Dubai Industrial City.

Gulf countries need to act to encourage more GCC nationals to work in the industrial sector, according to a new report by the Gulf Organisation for Industrial Consulting (GOIC).

The report said the fact that up to 95 percent of workers in the sector are expats was "alarming".

It calls for a serious review of the academic curriculum in the region and intensified attention to industrial, technical and specialised education to match the needs of the industrial sector, Gulf Times reported on Tuesday.

The GOIC report added that not enough incentives have been given to the industrial sector in the GCC to recruit local workers.

Reviewing the current workforce, the report said many GCC youth shunned blue collar jobs and preferred governmental or administrative work due to the benefits these jobs offered.

According to the study, expatriates make up 80-85 percent of the total white/blue collar workforce in the industrial sector in the Gulf.

In the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait, this percentage is around 90-95 percent while in Oman it is 70 percent, followed by 63 percent in Saudi Arabia and 40 percent in Bahrain.

The report said that in 1997 there were 6,605 industrial units and factories, and this figure had almost doubled by 2008.

The capital invested in the industrial sector had also risen from $77.1bn in 1997 to around $150bn in 2008 while the workforce has risen from 521,000 to 971,000.

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READERS' COMMENTS

BLUE COLLAR GCC NATIONALS
Posted by Billy, Dubai, UAE on Tuesday 25 August 2009 at 13:31 UAE time


The problem here does not lie with the lack of incentives to the employers in this sector it lies with the GCC nationals themselves. They have not been given the education or skills at school, the sector demands long working hours, provides less than pristine working conditions and the pay is not as high as the government sector offers. Furthermore it would require GCC nationals to be part of an expat dominated team (especially at the beginning until more GCC nationals joined the sector ) and for them to be willing to work under the supervision of an expat manager, perhaps even an Asian manager. Add all this up and quite frankly there is no chance for this initiative to succeed. If the GCC nationals wanted to be blue collar workers then 95% of the workers now would not be expat.

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