All the Gulf Arab oil states offer similar outlooks for youth and young adults entering the working world. In Kuwait, I recently taught a student who said that she had been trained at Kuwait University to be a petroleum engineer. After graduating four years ago from that university, she said that she was soon given a job in the oil ministry where she did basically nothing for three years.
The young Kuwaiti engineer continued. She would go to here office at the ministry in the morning. She had a computer and worked at it-playing games, surfing the internet, and occasionally typing something up that was, indeed, related to work. However, most of the time there was nothing at all to do there--except to sit around talking to here colleagues.
This young mother of two told me, "I was bored to death." She applied three straight years to be accepted at a government-run oil firm instead. Finally, she was accepted, but instead of placing the woman in a job immediately where she could use her engineering skills, she was initially sent to work in data processing. (I believe she has now been transferred to a more amicable job.)
In short, the inefficiencies of patronage and unsoundness of the economic system which is currently preferred in Kuwait is dangerous to many citizen's mental and spiritual health in many ways. It is also an inefficient use of trained labor.
This disrespect for even Kuwaiti national laborers and specialists has helped lead to a great brain drain (from one of the wealthiest countries in the world) as the many foreign-trained Kuwaitis-such as health care specialists and doctors--often quickly give-up and take on better job offers & under better working conditions in other lands around the globe.
EX-PATS, ARAB GULF, INC. AND COSTS
Concerning the role of ex-pat or native entrepreneurs working in the Gulf Arab states, an editor for the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin notes, "Economic activity throughout the Arab world is dominated by the state and by businessmen who benefit from government patronage. Successful businessmen in the Arab world are far more concerned about preserving their own preferential individual relationships with government officials than they are about whether their governments gain entry into the World Trade Oranganisation or lift restrictions."
There are many Arab and non-Arab ex-pats that thrive in the business world of the Gulf. Nonetheless, as Etheridge points out, "The cost of monopolies cum cartels is paid by the whole society." She lists the problems as follows:
(1) Prices for consumer goods and services tend to be inflated, often
running several times higher than the international average.
(2) Competition is stifled and newcomers to the marketplace find it difficult,
if not nearly impossible to break in.
(3) Customer service is nearly non-existent.
(4) Innovation, research and development are stifled. Product or service quality is inconsistent and typically below the international average.
Whereas, these problems may be less endemic in Dubai than in other Gulf Arab states or regional emirates, I recall that for decades the current leader of Dubai and head of the UAE owned exclusively all rights to taxis in the emirates-making this famed free-marketer very wealthy indeed.
Having previously lived in the neighboring Emirate of Sharjah and having paid cheaper rates for taxi service there than in Dubai City, I know that a lot of poor foreign workers in Dubai were forced to pay more-than-they-should-have in taxi fairs to help make this Emir ever better-off financially.
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