Saudi Arabia’s Rich and Poor Can Sleep Under Bridges

Twenty minutes’ drive from Riyadh’s glitzy shopping malls, elderly Saudi women sit chatting along a dusty street in one of the capital’s poorest suburbs beside scraps of moldy bread spread out to dry on a blanket.

Later, one woman says, they will bag the dried scraps collected from around the neighborhood and sell them cheap for animal feed. As a veiled beggar approaches seeking money, the woman says simply: “We are poor.”

Poverty is a side of Saudi Arabia that the monarchy has long avoided discussing, that Saudis are reluctant to speak about with strangers, and that is overshadowed in the outside world by the image of a gilded kingdom flush with oil money.

But it got unexpected attention from Crown Prince Abdullah’s visit to Riyadh’s slums in November, during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims’ thoughts turn to the poor. The visit by Abdullah, who runs the kingdom’s daily affairs, was viewed as a show of determination to eradicate poverty and a rare admission in a country not used to its leaders openly discussing problems.

Jamal Kashoggi, deputy editor in chief of the English-language Arab News, called it “very courageous.”

“His point was not just, ‘Hey, Saudis, dig deep in your pockets and help other Saudis,’ ” Kashoggi said. “I think he wanted to say, ‘We have an economic problem; we need to address it.’ ”

Some Saudis in al-Shamissi, a neighborhood visited by Abdullah, work as barbers or grocers. Others sit outside their old cement and mud-brick homes, waiting for the better-off to drive by and drop off donations of vegetables or rice.

Mohammed Ali, a Yemeni teenager who lives in the nearby al-Aoud neighborhood, speaks of bad housing, unrepaired roads and families that can’t afford to send their children to school.

“The poor are everywhere, whether in Saudi or anywhere else,” he said.

The big oil money that started coming into Saudi Arabia in the mid-1970s -- money that transformed the desert realm into a modern kingdom -- did not last. Oil prices dropped, and Saudi Arabia spent a big chunk of its income on defense during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and the 1991 Gulf War. Unemployment officially stands at 10%, but unofficial estimates range from 13% to 27%.

Free-spending Saudis remain a fixture of the jet set. Just last summer, when King Fahd made his annual visit to his vast palace on the Spanish coast, hundreds of royals accompanied him and wowed the Spanish with their gambling and shopping sprees.

Prince Abdullah, on the other hand, prefers low-key vacations in Morocco. As Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, he is credited with taking steps against corruption. He has also insisted on some belt-tightening, requiring the country’s estimated 7,000 princes and princesses to pay for their phone and electricity services and their flights on the national airline.

For some regular Saudis, lifestyles have changed more drastically. They have taken jobs their parents hired foreigners to do, such as drivers and mechanics. Some moonlight to support their families. Outside a municipal building in Riyadh, the capital, Saudis line up at desks on the sidewalk to pay for formal letters to be written for licenses or job applications. For some men behind the desks, letter-writing is a second job.

Anti-poverty measures are debated in the media, and Saudis are looking to Abdullah to accelerate the slow-moving efforts of recent years to diversify and privatize the economy and create jobs for all.

“You need to get the public interested, the private sector interested -- and keep them interested,” said Said al-Shaikh, chief economist for the National Commercial Bank in Jiddah. “If you keep talking without delivering, then they will be disappointed.”

For decades, Saudi Arabia has been officially urging diversification of its economy. But al-Shaikh said private-sector manufacturing -- intended to be the engine for growth -- amounted to only about 6% of the nation’s $188-billion gross domestic product in 2002, compared with the 34% contributed by oil.

“That raises a big doubt on these development plans. What have they achieved? And if the intention was diversification, then we didn’t see diversification,” said al-Shaikh, adding that the local economy’s dependence on the ups and downs of oil prices results in volatile fiscal policies that disrupt private-sector growth.

Another challenge is an education system churning out graduates unqualified for the job market. There is no consensus, though, on whether to blame the system for pushing young Saudis toward extremism -- a common accusation from critics who note that 15 of the 19 terrorists of Sept. 11 were Saudis.

Too many Saudi university students graduate in social science fields, such as liberal arts and Islamic studies, leaving them unfit for the job market, al-Shaikh said. Too few, he added, have the computer and English skills needed to be competitive regionally or globally.

According to his most recent figures, for 1995-99, 48,000 Saudis in higher education graduated in social sciences while only about 10,000 graduated in engineering, about 8,000 in medical professions, and about 16,000 in computers and commerce.

“Our Saudi education system is not geared to science, technology -- areas that are required for the economy to grow,” al-Shaikh said.

With about 60% of Saudi Arabia’s 21 million people under 20, the employment problem spreads beyond the elite university-educated citizens. Efforts are being made to put high school graduates to work in service-sector jobs long held by foreign workers. That hasn’t been easy.

Mohammed Abu al-Jadayel, media advisor at the Jiddah Chamber of Commerce, said Saudis simply won’t replace foreigners in some jobs, such as airport porters, where Bangladeshis are paid 80 riyals -- about $21 -- for a 12-hour workday. And many won’t stay long in other positions.

Abu al-Jadayel tells of a supermarket manager finding his Saudi employee hiding in a back room. The worker’s aunt and cousin had walked into the store, and he was embarrassed to be seen toting grocery bags.

“When he wants to marry, who would marry a porter? That’s the way he looks at it,” al-Jadayel said.

There have, however, been success stories. Saudis have replaced many foreigners working at rental car agencies and in jewelry stores, where trainee jobs pay about $665 a month plus benefits. Young women are learning secretarial and computer skills.

Ali Saleh, 22, from the southern city of al-Bahah, says a jewelry training program taught him everything he needed to land a job in a Jiddah jewelry store -- from understanding karats to learning how to converse with female customers in a society where men aren’t accustomed to speaking with unrelated women.

Although satisfied, Saleh doesn’t recommend the job to other young Saudis.

“The hours are long -- morning and night -- and most Saudis have a hard time dealing with the women customers,” Saleh said, glancing at a couple of women peering into display cases and showing another a silver necklace. A year into the job, he says, he still isn’t used to it.