Seeking Domestic Peace in a Post-Oil Economy

Seated alone in a classroom, Radi Mohammad pages through his notes before his teacher arrives, struggling not only with the intricacies of electricity but--tougher yet--the mysteries of English.

Back in school at 26, Mohammad wants to become an electrician. He studies at the government’s Bahrain Training Institute, which is trying to help unemployed, low-paid and sometimes angry Bahrainis find jobs in an economy where more than 60% of the labor force is foreign.

The program is the most innovative in the Persian Gulf region, where expatriate workers often outnumber locals. Along with training, it tries to instill new attitudes--on punctuality and production--and it teaches in English, the language of world business.

Bahrain, a valued American ally because of its U.S. Navy base, may be pointing the way for other gulf states that have grown rich on oil but find the precious commodity running low.

The small island nation was the first in the region to find oil--in 1932--and will be the first to run out. Its reserves are expected to be used up by 2000. Qatar and Oman could run dry in the next 20 years, although Qatar is finding new natural gas reserves.

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Like other Mideast oil producers, Bahrain gave its people extensive benefits without asking much work. And like others, in trying to switch to a non-oil economy, it hired foreign experts and other expatriates to run things.

That led to a 1980s campaign of “Bahrainization” to put Bahrainis into the work force, but its underlying impetus was largely political and little regard was paid to worker qualifications. The result was inefficient workers and unhappy employers.

The training institute is part of a broad government plan to rectify those mistakes. Labor Minister Abdel-Nabi Shola said the aim is to provide work for more Bahrainis but based on competence, not just nationality.

“My message, my mission, is to find jobs for people--without discrimination,” he said.

The new effort has gained impetus from a small-scale insurgency by Bahrain’s Shiite Muslim community, which complains it is treated as an underclass although it is a slight majority of the 400,000 indigenous population.

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Since 1995, Shiites have set off small bombs at hotels, restaurants and shops in a campaign intended to destabilize the rule of the Al Khalifa family, which belongs to the mainstream Sunni Muslim sect.

So far, the Shiite unrest has had little effect--beyond raising a few jitters--on the banking and financial services that are replacing oil as the economy’s mainstay.

Slogans scrawled across crumbling walls in Shiite slums demand more democracy, but behind the walls people grumble even more about the lack of jobs and low wages.

Radi Mohammad, the would-be electrician, is a Shiite who could not afford college. He sees no future in his job as a helper at a power plant.

Dressed in a clean but well-worn white shirt, he said his commercial high school did not give him the skills to get ahead, so he came up with the 52 Bahraini dinars ($140) for the course at the training institute. He said proudly he is maintaining a B average.

“I think I will improve myself,” he said.

Shola, the labor minister who is himself a Shiite, denies the jobs program was started to calm the anger of poor Shiites. But they are the main beneficiaries since they make up most of the unemployed.

Among Bahrain’s 600,000 residents, the work force of 212,000 includes 135,000 foreign workers. Officially, unemployment is 2%, but diplomats say the real figure is 15%. Bahrain’s per capita income is the equivalent of $8,800 a year.

Last year, the government began requiring all companies to increase the number of Bahraini employees by 5% each year. Its upgraded employment service, using computers and counseling to match skills with needs, found 3,000 jobs last year.

The training institute also has been updated. It was once a crumbling campus teaching theory--not practice--where teachers were careful to render technical terms in Arabic to promote Arab nationalism.

“They were more interested in teaching in Arabic. . . . At the end of the day a person knows Arabic but he cannot work,” said Naji Ahmed al-Mahdi, the institute’s director. “They were putting nationalism before professionalism.”

Now the campus, bustling with young men and women, offers everything from business administration to sewing. Up-to-date labs and workshops give hands-on experience in computer studies, hydraulics, electronics and communications.

In 1992, the institute had about 650 students; today it has more than 4,000. The institute says 80% of its 1995 graduates managed to find jobs.

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Still, the employment program faces difficulties. For example, some employers worry about the new hiring quotas, fearing Bahraini workers will not be turned out fast enough to replace foreigners or will not get the right training.

“I can’t take in someone and give him a machine worth hundreds of thousands of dollars when he can’t read the manual,” said Khalid al-Zayani, co-chairman of the Al-Zayani Investments conglomerate.

Nonetheless, al-Zayani and other businessmen say the new employment programs show the government is getting serious about the country’s employment troubles.

“Recognizing the problem is half the way there,” al-Zayani said. “Now it is a matter of logistics.”