These states are now beginning to face the fallout of the presence of such a
large number of foreigners in the workforce. Demands exist from certain quarters
for giving the option of citizenship to those foreign workers who have lived in the
UAE for at least five years, which the government has flatly rejected (Bowman,
2007). One step the GCC countries are seriously considering is restricting unskilled
laborers to working for no more than six years in one country. Conversely, they are
also trying desperately to reduce dependence on foreign workers and increase the
participation of local workforce by motivating their citizens to get higher education
and training and develop skills required for various jobs currently held by the
expatriates. The governments of these countries consider all jobs and positions held
by foreign workers as vacant for their citizens. If they find a local citizen who fulfills
the required qualification and experience for a job held by an expatriate, the local
person would replace him or her. These policies are known variously as Saudization
in Saudi Arabia, Qatarization in Qatar, Bahrainization in Bahrain and localization
in Oman and the UAE. The Saudization policies, although introduced in the late
1990s, have not achieved much success in the private sector. The major reasons
for not getting the desired results of this policy, as quoted from the Consultancy
Research Report, is that "a majority of skilled and technically-trained Saudis do not
work in their field of specialization, because they despise manual work and prefer
to work in managerial and office jobs" (Madhi & Barrientos,2003), They like
white-collar jobs and tcl achieve their career goal, they study public administration,
business studies, computer science, and Library and Information Science (LIS)
that prepare them for the public sector but not so much for the private sector.
Employers in the private sector expect more work with less salary, longer hours -
and punctuality, which nationals find hard to accept. If employers are put under
pressure to accept a certain percentage of nationals fur jobs, many would rather
pay the monthly salary and ask the employee to stay home.