Yemenis Treated as Lower Class Citizens in Business Sector

"I can’t have a job until I have colored eyes and white skin!" said 29 years old Abdullah Ali mocking at the unfair treatment he faces with a most Yemenis in their country. "I have high qualifications but the company preferred to employ foreigners! I don't know when Yemeni people will get rid of the foreign knot"

In Yemen, job owners prefer foreigners instead of Yemenis. Even though there are no real advantages related to qualifications or performance, many authorities prefer foreigners though they pay them more. These acts take part in increasing the unemployment problem among qualified youth.

At the same time, Yemeni employees who work under foreign managements complain about the unfair treatment. They claim that foreigners usually try to reduce the importance of their work. In most cases foreigners show off and don't accept Yemeni employees' opinions. Furthermore, Yemeni employees may suffer from not getting all their rights when working under foreign managements like raising their salaries and having promotions. 

Ironically, and unlike other countries, the foreigner salary is often more than the Yemeni salary who works in the same job. Moreover, job owners give foreigners a lot of advantages which cost them a lot such as yearly traveling tickets, a home, a driver among other things. Salaries of some foreigners who come to work in Yemen as experts in major projects reach to $15,000 and even more per month. The salary doesn't include the rent which may reach $3,000 to $4,000 per month.

Ahmed Ahmad Ismael is a Yemeni Employee who works the Ministry of Oil and Petroleum talked about an Indian expert who the ministry pays $13,000 per month. He also lives in one of the biggest hotels in Sana'a and the ministry provides him a car and driver. On weekends, the ministry arranges a tourism programs for the expert. Ahmed said that the expert is not much better than the other employees and there are many Yemenis who can fill his position.

In one of the Yemeni  ministry’s, an Iraqi employee who is works under the title "Expert in MS Power Point" gets paid $900 per month while Yemeni computer programmers in the same ministry get paid almost $120 only. 

Job owners in Yemen have a strong belief that foreign employees are always better than Yemenis. In fact, job owners revealed important details about preferring foreign employees than Yemenis. Their point of view shows that Yemeni employees have many bad qualities which force job owners to prefer foreigners over Yemenis even if they will have to pay them more.

Job owners claim that they have to keep watching their Yemeni employees if they want a good performance while foreigners always do there best without the need of watching them. They complain that the majority of  Yemeni employees spend a long time to perform their tasks just to benefit from the overtime payments. In addition, the Yemeni employee is not active and always complains about work.

Furthermore, it is hard to keep him at work when it is Qat time. In many jobs, the Yemeni employee will work for a short time just to have an experience to open his own business after knowing enough about the company secrets.

On the other hand, Yemeni employees don't agree with the job owners' point of view. They believe that Yemen has a lot of perfect employees who are much better than foreigners and they are always neglected. Rokaya Saleh, a tewacher in one of the government schools describes the situation in her school saying "I have been teaching for more than 10 years. In the previous eight years we had an excellent Yemeni director who did many good things for the school and parents felt satisfied about the school performance. Instead of rewarding the school director, they replaced him with a foreigner director from one of the Arab countries and they pay him much more. The new director rarely attends, and when he does he comes to create some problems to get red of the Yemeni teacher and replace them by some of his friends of the same nationality. “Unlike the past, today the number of foreign teachers is increasing and I fear that one day the new director replaces all the Yemeni teachers in the school by foreigners. "

To save citizens rights, many countries put restricted lows which prevent foreigners from working in a number of jobs like holding management positions. This procedure has been taken after it was realized that, in some cases, foreign managers were unjust when dealing with employees working under them.   "I applied for a job at one of the universities where I live since I have all the required qualifications to fill that position. Unfortunately, the university didn't accept me because as a foreigner I can't be a manager. ", said Huda Ahmed, a Yemeni female who lives in the Gulf.

Many countries stopped employing foreigners as a solution to reduce the unemployment problem. Saudi Arabia for example replaced foreign employees by Saudis'. The Saudi decision was a necessity to provide more jobs for Saudi citizens. In addition, many countries give the priority for employing to citizens even if they don't have all the qualifications that foreigners have.

"I have been living with my husband abroad for 5 years. I couldn't find any job to spend my spare time in a good way. I tried to find a volunteering job but until now I couldn't find one. Ironically, and not like other embassies, when I went to our embassy applying for a job at the embassy, I was shocked that many employees were not Yemenis. Finally the foreign employee told me that I am not qualified enough to have the job in my embassy!" said a university graduate Khawla Salah who live in a foreign country.

A lot of Yemenis who suffered from working under foreign managements traveled outside Yemen looking for brighter future. Whether those employees were working in communications or petroleum or other companies, today they are happy with there new job outside Yemen getting much more than what they got in Yemen.