Even as authorities in Saudi Arabia have intensified searches for “illegal” immigrants at workplaces as part of the Saudization drive, Nitaqat, families of Indians, especially Keralites, facing the prospect of losing jobs there are pinning their hopes on the possibility of Riyadh bringing in relaxations to the programme for various reasons.
Travel agents well-versed in affairs connected with migration to the Gulf say that the drive to fill a minimum of 10 per cent positions in companies there with Saudi nationals may not succeed in its entirety within the expected period primarily for the simple reason that it is difficult to find the required number of Saudi citizens to fill so many posts.
“It is not impossible but it is difficult. They will have to do it in phases. Nitaqat has been designed in their national interest but it is not easy for them to get enough nationals to do the jobs that are currently being done by foreigners who are facing the Nitaqat axe,” said a Kozhikode-based travel agent specialising in servicing Saudi-bound Keralites.
He said that the current inspections in Saudi Arabia are not against small companies or those who work in them but are intended to identify illegal residents. “I don’t think there will be an exodus but some damage is inevitable as far as we are concerned. That is where the Indian Government should intervene in the most intelligible manner,” he said.
Reports from Saudi Arabia say that several companies which contract Government-related construction and maintenance works are complaining about shortage of manpower to complete many of the works they have taken up in time. It is said that the current inspections that have forced many workers to remain indoors have caused serious problems to them.
Keralites preparing to leave Saudi Arabia in the context of Nitaqat implementation now hope that they may be given a chance to remain in their jobs by finding legitimate sponsors or they could return to the Arab kingdom as legal migrants after a few months as the actual outcome of the Saudization move becomes obvious.
“Those facing deportation under Nitaqat belong to the low-income and unskilled and semi-skilled job-sectors. I don’t think the Saudi authorities would get enough nationals to replace such a workforce. In that context, they will have to bring in some relaxations to the programme,” said Jamal, a native of Koilandy, Kozhikode working in a small restaurant in Jeddah.
At the same time, experts on migration affairs point out that the current Saudization programme will lead to the next phase of the cyclical migration process in the Gulf, which was first witnessed in the wake of the recession — the so-called bubble-burst — that had shattered Dubai’s economy in October-November, 2009.
According to experts, when the Dubai economic bubble burst in 2009, close to 40,000 Keralites were forced to leave the UAE but a majority of them migrated to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, countries which had been untouched by the recession and which were on the highway of development at that point of time.
“After the bubble-burst, there was a fall by 37,000 in the number of Keralites working in the UAE but the number of Malayalees in Saudi Arabia increased by over 70,000. Qatar received a large number of Keralites too. The current Saudi situation may lead to a repeat of that,” says Ismail, who had left Dubai in early 2010 to become an oil firm executive in Doha.
Though no exact figures are available for the number of Malayalees working in the Arabian Gulf, official estimates project the number as 2.28 million while informal estimates put it at over three million. The UAE is host to about nine lakh (over 40 per cent) of them while close to 6,00,000 (25 per cent) are in Saudi Arabia.