Foreign workers in spotlight

Rapidly increasing development rates create challenges that must be tackled to reduce their negative impact on society and its future development. This has been the case throughout history, especially in countries that witnessed sudden leaps of growth.

At the end of January, a number of ministers, officials and specialists gathered at the 15th annual conference of the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research held in Abu Dhabi.

Participants discussed one of the most important challenges facing GCC countries — namely education and the growing labour market resulting from high growth rates. They also looked at the need to balance education and the labour market on one hand, and recruiting more foreign workers on the other.

Role of education

In his opening speech, Dr Jamal Sanad Al Suwaidi, Director-General of the centre, pointed out education failed to cope with the latest scientific and technical developments.

Jeremy Rifkin, President of the US Foundation on Economic Trends, talked about the relationship between education, telecommunication, and energy.

Humaid Mohammad Obaid Al Qutami, Minister of Education, stressed the importance of finding a coordination mechanism between educational institutes and economic sectors, especially as educational levels are low compared to international rates. Dr Lynn A. Karoly, a senior economist at the US RAND Corporation, spoke about the same issue.

Alexander Wiseman, an associate professor at the US Lehigh University emphasised preparing the youth in GCC countries must not be limited to the GCC labour market alone, but must be extended to the international labour market.

Saqr Gobash Saeed Gobash, Minister of Labour, called for the improvement of educational outputs and minimising the differences between the public and private sectors, while his Bahraini counterpart, Dr Majeed Al Alawi, asserted the importance of decreasing the dependence on foreign labour.

Paul Dyer, research associate of the Dubai School of Government emphasised GCC economies failed to benefit from the increase in the number of youths due to the educational methods followed and the control of the public sector over the economy.

Philip Brown, distinguished research professor at Cardiff School of Social Sciences-Cardiff University, pointed out the global economic downturn has shown future prosperity depends on winning competitive advantages in the global knowledge-oriented economy, which highlights the crucial role of education.

The important issue here is the one related to the globalised economy. Since commodities and services move freely among international markets without restrictions, jobs are now moving freely from one place to another.

Currently, there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that move annually from developed countries to developing countries as a result of the competitive advantages of jobs in the latter group of countries.

Hence, GCC countries may make use of information technology and scientific and technical progress through bringing in skilled labour which is required by the development process to be present in the county.

GCC countries may still make use of foreign expertise and services while they are residing in their own countries, which is an advantage that was not available before. Developing education in GCC countries is required not only to meet the needs of the Gulf labour market, but also to compete globally through offering cross border services to move between international markets according to their competitive qualities.

This means it is necessary to change the traditional view in GCC countries about foreign manpower to include the new concepts imposed by globalisation.

In this case, GCC countries can be an important part of the globalised world economy, especially as they have competitive qualities in many economic sectors, which qualifies them to make use of economic globalisation, a qualified labour force, in addition to educating and training Gulf nationals, and giving them the required skills needed in the globalised labour market.

Hence, we can say that the traditional view of the relationship between educational outputs and the labour market will not serve the development issue unless it takes into consideration the rapid changes in the international economy, as well as the requirements of the Gulf job market and the globalised nature of the international labour market.

The writer is a UAE economic expert.