Young Power

Recently I have realized that I wasn’t the only one here in Bahrain to have shifted jobs for three times. Actually it came to my attention that many young adults recently have been changing work for quite some time now. Maybe it was the environment I live in where almost 50% of people I interact with work in the BDF or the Ministry of Interior. Regardless, this fact is not a bad thing if you look at it from a certain angle, but it can be considered bad when people switch jobs because of unhealthy work environments. I am not prepared to talk about my experience in this post, but I will be talking more in general terms.

Unemployment in Bahrain is not a thing to joke about, regardless what the official figures show. I take this fact simply looking at the amount of people who have volunteered in schools and health services recently. It shows that many young people who already have their degrees are stuck at home jobless because there is a lack of opportunities that would fit their credentials or even come close to that matter. Of course I am a great believer in the power of the private sector’s potential to drive this country forward, but it seems that the private sector is lacking the drive that would eventually allow it to expand and compete with major regional powers like Dubai. Blaming the government is what you would normally hear from the other side of the argument, yet it seems that local business leaders have little interest in the Bahraini market or in developing it properly. So we see more efforts from the EDB in promoting Bahrain to foreign investment, and that in all honesty is like moving mountains, since it is useless to convince foreign investors to choose the unstable Bahrain to the more business friendly Dubai. This little opinion of mine regarding the economic environment here is basically going to affect the job market here and in turn will affect the average income of Bahrainis.

Coming back to my post’s theme, I am certain that many people who will read this will look back and think that they are not happy about their job or their work environment but that there is little or no choice other than sitting helplessly at home regretting a stable income. What would happen naturally is that all this energy that young people have will eventually be lost rather than be invested properly. It saddens me whenever I learn of a young Bahraini that moved to Dubai or Qatar to look for a job instead of settling here in Bahrain and benefitting from what this person’s energy can provide even in the short run, let alone those who give up altogether on the public sector and move to the old and stagnated public sector. This has many reasons to it in my humble opinion. I think that Bahrainis get along very well in work places regardless of their ethnic or heritage background, but it is a different matter when expatriates come into the equation. I do not wish to pinpoint expatriates as the main reason for putting down the Bahraini job seekers, but I think you would agree that some expatriates do look and act like mercenaries that are very territorial in regards to making money. Yet I have noticed a great many of them who have developed very patriotic love to this little island nation. Also there seems to be some lack of faith in the Bahraini worker that will force employers to look elsewhere for more productive workforce. This is a cultural norm here in Bahrain, because only a few generations ago did people actually realize that you would need to work hard to provide for your family. So a major campaign of awareness should be taken into consideration by both the government and the private sector in informing future job seekers that the time of economic socialism is over and taking it easy is no more a way of life.

There are other more economical and social reasons behind why people would move between jobs or seek them elsewhere and I could go on for volumes if I would want to research into it, but the fact remains that unless direct measures are taken then we would eventually see a lack of growth in a country that is desperate for it. Plus we would see more fertile ground for extreme ideals to take root in the minds of those who have the energy to act.