Eng. Ahmed Al-Rajhi, the Saudi Arabian Minister of Human Resources and Social Development (MHRSD), introduced the second iteration of the Tawteen (Localization) programme, which intends to provide 170,000 job possibilities for Saudi citizens.
The ministry made it clear that the jobs that are intended to be localised are spread across a variety of industries, including 25,000 in industry, 20,000 in health care, 20,000 in transportation and logistics, 20,000 in real estate and construction, 30,000 in tourism, 15,000 in real estate and construction, and 40,000 jobs in other industries. The primary objective of the program is to determine the specialities required by the labour market.
Al-Rajhi during the Tawteen launch ceremony emphasised on the success achieved in the first edition of the program was a great motivation to continue to work towards the goals of employment strategy and vision 2030.
This time Tawteen 2 will focus on creating employment opportunities with a leading role for supervisory authorities with increased emphasis on required cadres in qualitative technical professions and specializations.
Al-Rajhi also added that accomplishing this task would depend heavily on the help of supervisory authorities, who will have to ascertain the need for employment in the various fields to get to bring down the unemployment levels to less than 7%, meaning the actual level of unemployment would be below 3.5%.
The supervisory authorities in this phase of Tawteen will be controlled by six ministries, namely the Ministry of Tourism; the Ministry of Commerce; the Ministry of Transport and Logistic Services; the Ministry of Health; the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing; and the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources.
This Tawteen phase will contain the “supply and demand foresight” programme, which will strive to determine the labour market’s demands as well as the number of jobs that need to be generated.
Al-Rajhi also acknowledged that a programme called “Skills Accelerator and Training Vouchers” had been started to take the employee’s level from intermediate to advanced.
