Source : Saudi Gazette / 31 Mar 2014

The Ministry of Labor started on Sunday the implementation of the third phase of the feminization of shops selling women’s accessories. 

This phase includes shops selling female perfumes, Jalabiyas (traditional dresses), bags, shoes, socks, clothes and fabrics for women as well as shops selling mother-care products (baby stuff are excluded), and pharmacies in malls selling beauty products and accessories. 

Source : Arab news / 29 Mar 2014

The Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowment and Guidance has urged preachers to keep their Friday sermons short and concise and is considering taking legal action against preachers who discuss controversial topics.

“Ministry inspectors have received complaints from worshippers that preachers make their sermons unnecessarily long and often repeat the same sermons several times throughout the year,” a ministry source said. “Boring sermons make worshippers inattentive and defeat the purpose of attracting people to faith.”

Source : IINA / 25 Mar 2014

Jeddah is set to become a local and regional focal point for the rapidly expanding textile industry. Yesterday, the first “Textile Arabia” exhibition started at Jeddah Center for Events and Forums.

Source : IINA / 24 Mar 2014

Saudi Railways Organization (SRO) President Muhammad Al-Suwaiket said the project linking Makkah to Madinah (Al-Haramain Train Project) will be ready by 2016, while adding: “Only 50 % of the project has been completed so far.”

Source : Arab news / 22 Mar 2014

Saudi Arabia plans to build one of the biggest biometric centers in the world, which will contain the eye, facial and finger imprints of almost 30 million people, a biometric expert told local media.

Source : AP / 21 Mar 2014

The deportations began in November as part of a nationwide campaign targeting many of the kingdom’s 9 million migrant labourers. 

Saudi Arabia says it has deported 370,000 foreign migrant workers from the kingdom over the past five months.

By Irfan Mohammad / Arab news / 21 Mar 2014

The project for translating Friday sermons at the Two Holy Mosques in Makkah and Madinah is rapidly expanding to include languages other than Urdu and English.

Live translation into the Malay and French will be launched from Friday at the Grand Mosque in Makkah.

By P.K. Abdul Ghafour / Arab news / 20 Mar 2014

Over half of Friday sermon listeners do not remember the subject of the sermon, according to a recent survey conducted by the King Abdul Aziz National Dialogue Center. 

However, more than two-thirds of the 685 respondents, picked randomly from the Kingdom’s 13 regions, said sermons had impacted their lives.

Source : Arab news / 19 Mar 2014

Employees of the Kaaba cloth factory roll up their sleeves spending four hours every fortnight to clean the cloth covering the Kaaba to ensure it is free of dust from the ongoing expansion projects in the Holy Mosque. Employees work around the clock to meet the project deadlines of the expansion of the holy mosque. 

Source : Saudi Gazette / 18 Mar 2014

The Saudi job market is expected to open up considerably in the next three months, with seven out of 10 companies expecting to create up to 10 new positions, according to a survey.

Most of these jobs will be with large or multinational private companies, presenting exciting opportunities for new graduates and first-time employees in particular, showed the latest Bayt.com Middle East and North Africa Job Index Survey, conducted by Bayt.com, the Middle East’s number one job site, and YouGov, a research and consulting organization.