Egyptians Lose Work As Qataris Decree Jobs For Themselves

By Riham El-Houshi and Rachel Heaton

Fathy Ibrahim is returning to Egypt.

For 13 years he was a schoolteacher in the oil-rich Arab state of Qatar, but his contract was not renewed this summer. When school ends, he and his family will return to Cairo.

Ibrahim left a lot behind. He started his family in Qatar; it is the only home his children have ever known. But because legal status and existence throughout the Persian Gulf is tied to one's work visa, Ibrahim must leave.

"I am convinced that it is fate and it's not like I wanted to live and die in this country," Ibrahim said. "I will earn five times less than what I earned in Qatar, but they said, 'Good bye' to us, and I don't intend on trying to stay."

Ibrahim is among other 71 expatriates recently fired from his school. As control of Qatari schools shift from the government to private operators, there is an effort to replace teachers like Ibrahim with Qataris.

He and other expatriates in Qatar are losing their jobs as a result of a policy known as Qatarization, which aims to nationalize the work force.

It is not a new concept in the region, where foreign workers greatly outnumber local populations. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are among the wealthy Petrostates with similar programs. The policies seek to end dependence on foreign labor.

Qatarization began in the late '90s. Progress was sporadic for many years, according to Faisal Al Emadi, the chairman of the two-year-old Department of the Development of the National Workforce within the Ministry of Labor. The department registers Qataris searching for jobs
and places them in positions that suit their qualifications.

Al Emadi said since late October 2007, the department has placed Qataris in 9,230 jobs held by expatriates in the public and private sector. Within the public sector, he said, there are 126 job categories the program will aim to place Qataris in.

Egyptian white-collar workers in Qatar -- accountants, clerics, nurses, bankers -- worry that their jobs, and their way of life, will be wiped out.

It has happened before. In the late '90s, tensions between the two countries resulted in several hundred Egyptians being fired from their jobs. After talks, Qatar provided aid to those who had been laid off and promised to stop those firings from happening again.

The Egyptian ambassador to Qatar, Abdel Aziz Dawoud, insists Qatarization is not targeting Egyptians. Somewhere between 120,000 and 130,000 Egyptians live in Qatar, according to the Ambassador, who said they were generally liked among the Qatari people.

Still, Egyptians in Qatar are reluctant to talk publicly about the policy.

An Egyptian school nurse said that four of co-workers had been fired although their contracts had not expired. As of yet, her fate is uncertain.

"It's very scary and frustrating and we cannot go to anyone for help because it's a government decree," she said. "Who could possibly reverse it?"

There is help available for those terminated if they seek it out. The Egyptian Embassy said it has helped three expatriates find other jobs, but there is no specific plan to aid Egyptians who find themselves jobless.

Egyptian Embassy labor consultant Alaa Awad stressed that the firing of Egyptians is not a phenomenon. He pointed out that Qatar still relies heavily on the Egyptian labor force, specifically in the medical field.

"A lot of Egyptians here are doctors," he said. "Entire hospitals are run by Egyptians, and those will not be affected by Qatarization because Qatar only produces about one doctor a year."

Demographics demonstrate the unrealistic expectations of Qatarization. Its goal is for nationals to make up half of the private sector's employees. But Qataris are only 20 percent of the population.

Depite it being a program to benefit them, not all Qataris support the employment initiative. One is Yousra Abdelall, a student at Qatar University who wrote an award-winning paper critical of the policy.

"The public sector has replaced most expat employees with Qatari nationals but the private sector hasn't and this is causing resentment with many Qataris," Abdelall said. "Many Qataris I have talked to think that Qatarization is just all words and not action and feel they have not benefited from the initiative."

Qatarization highlights some problems within the rapidly developing country. Education, for example, is undergoing large reforms in order to better train residents. Six years ago there was nowhere to train a white-collar workforce, save Qatar University.

But not all problems are solved by building universities. A language barrier has made it difficult for Qataris to succeed in university, where many classes are taught in English. To solve this problem, many schools are now teaching almost exclusively in English.

There is also a sense of entitlement within the Qatari population, specifically teenage boys, said Robert Baxter, communications advisor for Qatar Foundation, the body created to bring educational reform in the country.

In the past, Qataris didn't have to work because oil wealth was distributed by the state. Those with jobs worked mainly in the public sector, where hours are short, and benefits numerous.

Al Emadi said there is some difficulty convincing Qataris to take jobs within the private sector. "Some nationals are not willing to take on certain jobs for personal and social reasons," he said.

Low wages and high unemployment rates in Egypt are the harsh reality for those returning from Qatar. Ibrahim, in some ways, is lucky. He will return to a job he had as a schoolteacher before he left Egypt.

Rachel Heaton is in her third year at the University of Missouri, studying print and digital news. She previously interned at MSN UK in London last fall. Riham El-Houshi is a journalism graduate of The American University in Cairo, where she was the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Caravan. El-Houshi has also written for newspapers in Egypt and Qatar.

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Comments

[FirstBiteBooks]

Well, as far as I know Egypt also passed through a period in the 1930s and 1940s when they tried to minimize foreign involvement (British and French) in the public sector. In that way university jobs, for example, became vacant for Egyptians but they, unfortunately, didn't have yet the needed qualifications. So Egypt emphasized the so called study missions to mainly Western countries and public sector jobs were filled with Egyptians with Western degrees. However, as a result of population growth, "white collar" graduates instead of technical and vocational ones, lopsided economy, etc. intellectual unemployment in Egypt has increased and Egyptians were forced to search for jobs in the West or in the Middle East.

After 9/11 it became very difficult for Egyptians to find employment in many Western countries and now we see this happening with previously friendly countries such as Qatar.

[bismillah001]

Thanks for this, Huffpo. Sadly, people seem uninterested in most news like this unless there is a 'Muslims are bad' frame they can put on it. But I thought I ought to thank you for not doing a story like that for your news from the Middle East, for once.

[ModernTimes1]

Yet you're unwilling to comment on the news item itself beyond engaging in victimized narrative.

[colah]

Great post Modern. I bet you are great at parties.

[FirstBiteBooks]

Neither did you.