800,000 expatriate jobs for nationals

There are more than 800,000 private sector jobs currently held by expatriates that can be filled by national workers, according to a national employment authority.

While the National Human Resources Development and Employment Authority, or Tanmia, did not say how these jobs may be handed over to nationals, it identified the leading job areas as being in accountancy, secretarial work, sales and marketing, store keeping, public relations and clerical work.

Tanmia estimated that these jobs account for 39 per cent of the total jobs available for nationals in private companies or 322,994.

Furthermore, it has estimated that there are around 201,000 auto mechanic jobs that can be filled by nationals, 39,000 of them in the auto electricity, auto air conditioning and auto heavy equipment sectors.

More than 171,000 jobs in civil engineering are available at contracting and engineering companies. Of these 114,398 jobs in construction, 56,320 jobs in trading in real estate and 918 as surveyors.

It also identified nearly 7,000 jobs as welders, and more than 6,500 jobs in computer engineering; nearly 129,000 in tailoring, and more than 2,000 in nursing that may be filled.

On the other hand, Tanmia, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Youth, plans to train students, whose age is above that set by the ministry for schoolboys, on simple jobs available for nationals in the private sector. The ministry's 2000-2001 records estimate these students total 3,282 in all emirates.