DOHA: Despite the government’s efforts to push more and more nationals into private jobs, not many Qataris seem to be keen to take up employment with private companies.
A sample survey of jobless Qataris conducted by the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics shows that a vast majority of them are reluctant to join the private sector.
Out of a total of 1,609 Qatari men and women without jobs who were part of the survey, 1,123, or some 70 percent, expressed their unwillingness to take up private employment.
The sample survey was part of an extensive 3rd Quarter Labor Force Survey, 2014 carried out by the Development Planning Ministry. More women (1,130) than men (479) were part of the sample surveyed.
Some 787 of these women (slightly less than 70 percent) said they wouldn’t prefer private jobs, while 336 out of the 479 men said a straight no to private sector employment. About the reasons why so many Qataris are unwilling to join private companies despite being jobless, the ministry carried out a separate survey covering some 323 people.
A quarter of them cited low wages as the main reason for not joining the private sector, while 19 percent described work timings of private companies as being quite long.
Another 20 percent said they found the timings of private companies odd.
At least 12 percent of the respondents said they didn’t approve of six-day week in the private sector.
Some 11 percent cited lack of post-retirement benefits as the reason for their dislike of private employment, and five percent said they lacked English language skills to be on a private job.
Another eight percent said they didn’t like the mixed environment of work (men and women working together) in private companies so they wouldn’t prefer to be in their employ.The Peninsula
DOHA: Average monthly pay has been going up in the country and crossed the QR10,000-mark ($2,746.12) by September-end this year. It was QR10,761, up over 11 percent from the average salary of QR9,667 in 2013.
Figures released by the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics for the third quarter (Q3, 2014) show that the average monthly pay for men was QR11,084, while that for women, QR9,822.
The total number of people in paid employment in Qatar was slightly over 1.64m by Q3 end, of them only 221,000 were women.
