Education Ministry renews 31,800 contracts, excludes applicants who fail to meet requirements

The Ministry of Education said that the contracts of employees whose terms expired in recent months had not been terminated from the civil service roster, but had instead reached the end of their legal terms and were subject to new regulations and requirements before being renewed, as part of measures aimed at organizing the contracting process and addressing previous violations.

Abdul Karim Al-Qadri, the ministry’s Director of Administrative Development, said in a statement published on the ministry’s website that the ministry had received 32,545 applications to renew contracts and approved 31,800 of them after “their holders met the approved requirements and criteria.” A number of contracts were not renewed because “the applicants’ academic qualifications did not match the required specialization.”

Al-Qadri said “the ministry had returned employees who had been transferred to their original contracting locations after a surplus was identified at their transfer sites,” adding that these measures were part of efforts to reorganize staff distribution in line with the needs of educational institutions.

He added that the permanent appointment of any contract worker would only take place through “a presidential decree or in accordance with the provisions of the new Civil Service Law,” noting that contract employment remains subject to the applicable legal framework.

The remarks came amid demands and objections voiced on social media in recent weeks by a number of teachers and contract workers whose contracts were not renewed. They called for some cases to be reconsidered and for the renewal criteria to be clarified.