Job security

I’m one of those people that can’t help looking for the catch. Hand me a shiny apple and I’ll expect a fat maggot at its centre. As you can imagine, the boom we’re currently experiencing in the Middle East has left me waiting anxiously for the other shoe to drop.

There’s no denying that things are going very well at the moment. The region is enjoying a period of prosperity not seen since the glittering heights of the Caliphate. We’re all feeling supremely confident about our prospects, and why shouldn’t we? Just look around you, we’re living in a part of the world that is changing before our very eyes. The march of progress is on and we’re all poised to reap the benefits.

But forgive me if I don’t start celebrating just yet. In a surging economy, you would expect unemployment to be a minor concern. After all, these massive skyscrapers and leisure developments need someone to build them and oil isn’t going to extract itself. So how to explain unemployment rates across the region that hover around 14 percent? The answer is right under your nose. Take a look at the people working on our construction sites and drilling rigs. Chances are you won’t see too many Middle Eastern faces. We rely to a terrific extent on foreign labour to fuel our economic transformation and that leaves us in an extremely precarious position.

Both the UAE and Qatar’s populations are 80 percent expatriate. Dubai is 85 percent foreign. These are truly staggering figures that are mirrored to a lesser extent in many other Gulf states. In a region where a baby boom has been underway since the eighties and the median age ranges from 16 to just over 30 years old, this dependence on foreigners is particularly baffling. It all comes down to education. Despite an increased focus on training in recent years, we are simply not producing skilled workers in the volume required to staff our own industries.

True, there are a number of initiatives underway attempting to halt this slide. Governments in Qatar, Dubai and Jordan have pledged huge amounts of cash to training and development programmes, but these efforts are going to take a long time to have any effect. Also, anyone with experience of such government-backed projects will be well aware of their potential to consume funds without offering any tangible end product. ‘Arabisation’ policies are also being tried out, particularly in Saudi Arabia. However, major question marks hang over such endeavours. These programmes largely apply to unskilled labourers in low paid jobs that the locals don’t want anyway. Is it really in our interest to give away positions currently occupied by hard-working foreigners to other, less motivated individuals simply because of where they were born?

Going even further than that, there are even calls to limit the amount of time foreigners can stay in GCC countries. A move proposed by Bahrain and being given serious consideration by other member states, would limit the time foreign workers can remain to six years. Supporters of the move claim that, in addition to the unemployment issue, foreign workers are damaging local culture and customs. Quite aside from the turmoil such a move would cause and the effect it would have on the region’s reputation as a place to do business, this looks spectacularly unfair. We have been happy to grow fat off the backs of foreign labour, but are far less keen to accept any changes we did not expressly wish for. It’s not a great example of Middle Eastern hospitality

Unfortunately, there is no quick fix. A lack of foresight has left us in an uphill battle that we’ll be waging for many years to come. I only hope we’re up to the task.