Shoura suggests MoL committee on Saudization
The Shoura Council during its 64th ordinary session called for the establishment of a committee in the Ministry of Labor made up of relevant bodies to coordinate and supervise the Saudi employment strategy, and provide the necessary support for its implementation.
It also demanded continued efforts by the ministry in cooperation with the Ministry of Interior to correct the status of expatriates who are in violation of the Kingdom’s residency and labor laws.
The council voted on the recommendations put forward by the management and human resource committee with regard to the annual performance report of the Ministry of Finance for the financial year, 2013/2014.
Other reports under discussion were the Agricultural Development Fund’s annual report for the financial year 2013/2014 in addi- tion to the Ministry of Social Affairs report regarding the social, family and youth affairs committee for the same period.
Also on the agenda was the report of the energy and economic affairs committee with regard to the nationalization project in the Kingdom presented by member Abdulrahman Al-Rashed.
The committee approved the draft study which aims to create a business climate in the Kingdom to encourage the establishment of national productive sectors operated by Saudi labor and can meet the requirements of government apparatuses and companies of strategic sectors to replace imported goods with indigenous products.
They will also contribute to the diversity of the economic infrastructure in the Kingdom in addition to solving the problem of unemployment and support the Saudi business sector.
Last week, the council demanded that the government waive repayment of loans for people with limited incomes. The council sought the support of the Real Estate Development Fund, which would bear the brunt of such a waiver, and the Finance and Social Affairs Ministries in making the proposal a reality. The Ministry of Education recently admitted to 15 errors in textbooks, which were discovered thanks to activists on social networking sites.
In a press statement on Sunday, the ministry said the General Directorate of Curricula reviews errors and proposals regarding the annual academic curricula and publish them through social networking sites.
Although the ministry admitted to the errors, officials said that these blunders are relatively low, compared to the globally accepted standard of 10 errors per 100 pages. The ministry said it produces and prints 1,339 books with a total of 116,691 pages for students and teachers, and only 15 errors were identified overall, a majority of which were typos.
Officials said these blunders are relatively low, compared to the globally accepted standard of 10 errors per 100 pages.
Committees are carrying on with their review, both from inside and outside the ministry, and anyone with comments about the educational curriculum can visit the ministry’s website to post their feedback, said the ministry.
Sixty-three days into the aca- demic year, students have come across other errors in textbooks, but the main problem for the ministry now is the fact that an unspecified number of students in schools across the Kingdom have yet to receive their books.
While the ministry acknowledged its inability to provide enough material this academic year, the undersecretary of planning and development at the ministry, Rashid Al-Ghayad, attributed the delay to the unexpected increase in the number of nonSaudi students accepted by schools this year. He said the ministry is printing 10 percent more books to meet the need as early as possible.
Ali Al-Ghamdi, official spokesman of the ministry, said the ministry has begun to “distribute (the educational material) to schools with a shortage of books.”