10,000 Turn Up for 500 Job Vacancies
Arab News

JEDDAH, 21 April 2006 — An unexpectedly huge crowd of applicants turned up in Riyadh on Wednesday when 500 job vacancies were announced, causing chaos and injuring several people as they jostled to submit their applications, Al-Watan newspaper reported yesterday.

The Passport Department in Riyadh was swamped by 10,000 applicants according to the newspaper. They pushed and kicked, knocking several youths unconscious and injuring others. Officials at the counters could not cope with the waves of applicants scrambling to reach the counter at the northern gate of the department. Overwhelmed by the furious youths, the recruitment officials who were trying their best to complete the formalities of registration after receiving the applicants’ files, had to suspend the process, the newspaper reported.

The applicants, who came from across the Kingdom, had begun to converge in front of the department and in nearby streets since Tuesday morning. Many of them had been sleeping on the sidewalks or in their cars.

In view of the increasing number of applicants gathered in front of the department before nightfall on Tuesday, the department’s authorities decided to start the registration and reception of applications at 1 a.m., hours ahead of the originally scheduled time. However the youths with no apparent reason at all grew impatient and started to shout and heckle, disregarding instructions to queue up quietly before the counters.

They shouted at the officials and accused that the officials of dumping their files in a box without recording such details as the weight and height of each applicant. Some of them even attacked the officials at the counter and the officials were forced to stop their work.

The confusion and disorder increased and the desperate youths who were lucky enough to submit their files began to demand their files back. They rushed inside the office and took the boxes in which the files were kept. Finally, the authorities had no choice but to call in police to control the unruly crowd. In the meantime some officials tried to quell the unrest by announcing on loudspeakers that all the files would be processed only if the applicants waited patiently in the lounges until their names were called out.

Muhammad Al-Thaqafi, an applicant from a village in Taif, said, “I came here Tuesday noon and camped in front of the building as I could not afford to stay in a hotel and hoped that I could submit my application early in the morning and return home. I waited here 15 hours.”

In his opinion the situation deteriorated because of the impatience of the applicants and poor management of the situation by officials. They should have received the applications over two or three days instead of fixing a single day for it in view of the large number of unemployed youths in the Kingdom these days.

According to another applicant, the crowd grew impatient as most people were tired after a long journey from their distant towns. They were deeply worried because most of them have been unemployed over a long time.

The director of the department, Brig. Zaid Al-Tauraiqi, disagreed and said the situation went out of control despite the best-laid plans because the applicants did not abide by the instructions given to them.

“There were 17 counters with staff experienced in handling such procedures,” he said, denying that the registration would be postponed or cancelled.

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