Professional Accreditation

What professional accreditation is

Professional accreditation (الاعتماد المهني) is a certification granted by a competent body to a named individual, recognising that person as eligible to practise their profession.

What sets it apart is that it is a decision taken by a body about a person. It is not a description of an occupation, nor a code for one, nor a certificate issued to an establishment. That is where its practical weight for an employer comes from: an establishment is affected by the accreditation status of the people it employs, yet it has no power to grant that status.

The meaning used throughout is the one found in the Saudi localisation (توطين) decrees. Where professional accreditation is raised in connection with expatriate workers, we found no instrument on a programme of that kind in the sources we reviewed, so we describe none of its conditions, and the counting meaning set out below is not carried across to it.

Professional accreditation in the localisation decrees: a condition for counting

Localisation decrees for some targeted professions require the worker to hold professional accreditation, and they state the consequence of its absence in a single formula, which in our English rendering provides that workers who are not accredited are not counted within the imposed localisation percentages. How these decrees fit together with Nitaqat is set out in our guide to profession localisation decrees and Nitaqat.

The procedural guides we reviewed name the accrediting body in seven decrees, across three authorities:

• The Saudi Organization for Chartered and Professional Accountants: the accounting professions decree (103108).
• The Saudi Commission for Health Specialties: the decrees for the radiography professions (51273), the medical laboratory professions (51267), the physiotherapy professions (51270) and the therapeutic nutrition professions (51277), and the decree for the pharmacy profession (103111).
• The General Authority of Civil Aviation: the licensed aviation professions decree (208818).

Each decree is described in its own wording. In the pharmacy decree the subject of the sentence is “pharmacists”, while in the four other health decrees it is the workers in the targeted professions, and in the accounting decree it is “accountants”. Across the five health decrees the body is the same and the effect is the same, but the grammatical subject differs, so the wording of one decree is not transferred to another.

The limit of this effect deserves to be stated plainly. The counting sentence provides that a worker without accreditation is not counted in the percentage. That is a different matter from barring the worker from doing the job, and reading the sentence as a prohibition reads into it something it does not contain.

The seven decrees are what the guides we reviewed contain on this point, not a census of every localisation decree. Where no accrediting body was named in the guides we reviewed, it does not follow that the decree carries no accreditation condition. The five health decrees are compared side by side in our guide to health profession localisation decrees.

How professional accreditation is verified for localisation

The guides describe monitoring as automated. In the administrative support guide, the system applies the localisation formula using the occupational titles held in the social insurance database, and then checks wages and professional accreditation through a technical link with the supervisory bodies (الربط التقني مع الجهات الإشرافية). The check therefore does not run on a document the employer submits. It runs on data taken from its source.

The guides do not describe that link in detail or name the bodies connected to it, so we do not describe it either.

The full professional accreditation clause, and its two halves

The counting sentence described above is one half of a longer clause. The procedural guide for the pharmacy localisation decree (103111) sets out the clause in full. In our English rendering, it requires the pharmacist to obtain professional accreditation from the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties, in accordance with what is provided in the Health Professions Practice Law and the implementing regulation of the Health Professions Practice Law, and provides that unaccredited pharmacists are not counted within the imposed localisation percentages.

The clause therefore has two halves: a requirement that refers to the Health Professions Practice Law (نظام مزاولة المهن الصحية) and the implementing regulation of that law, and an effect on counting. The guides for the four other health decrees carry the same two halves, with the same body and the same reference to that law and its implementing regulation, but with the worker in the targeted professions as the subject in place of “the pharmacist”. For the accounting and aviation decrees we report only the accrediting body and the counting sentence, and the wording of the health clause is not carried across to them.

The Health Professions Practice Law and its implementing regulation were not among the sources we obtained. The pharmacy clause itself points to them for the requirement, so anyone looking for the conditions of accreditation is directed by the clause to those instruments and to the bodies that apply them, not to a localisation decree whose concern is the effect on counting.

In the sources we reviewed, we found nothing setting out which professions within each decree family need accreditation, on what qualification, by what deadline or at what cost. Nor did we find how long an accreditation lasts, how it is renewed, what losing it means for the worker’s contract, or how it figures in any localisation decree beyond the seven named above.

Who the pharmacy professional accreditation clause reaches

The table in the pharmacy decree lists eleven job titles in total, one of which is “pharmacist” (صيدلي) under code 226201. The guide does not say which of the other titles fall within “the pharmacist” in this clause, so we neither settle the question nor count them.

Counting the titles other than “pharmacist” would itself be a ruling on the open question, because it would exclude a title from the word “pharmacist” on the strength of its wording alone. That is why the total of the table is given and no figure is given for the remainder.

What professional accreditation is not

Other documents can sit in an employee’s file beside an accreditation, and none of them is one:

• The unified Saudi classification of occupations (التصنيف السعودي الموحد للمهن). It names an occupation and gives it a code. It is a reference for the occupation, not a decision about a person.
• Another authority’s approval on a change of profession. It applies when a worker who is not Saudi is licensed to work in a profession other than the one they hold a licence for. Under clause 6 of item Third of Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل), where the new profession requires a licence, approval or practice certificate under another authority’s rules, that authority’s approval must be obtained first. The Implementing Regulation gives the Saudi Council of Engineers (الهيئة السعودية للمهندسين) and the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties as examples, not as a closed list. The approval is a condition that comes before a procedure, not a condition for counting in a percentage.
• A sector skills council. It is a council formed under the supervision and operation of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, and its published output describes the skill needs of a sector through skills frameworks and skills information reports. Describing a sector accredits no individual.
• An academic qualification. It is awarded for study completed, whereas accreditation is a decision on eligibility to practise. A qualification may be a condition of accreditation, but it is not accreditation.
• A training certificate. It records attendance at a programme or completion of it. It does not decide professional eligibility, and it does not stand in for accreditation in the localisation check.
• Registration with social insurance. It records the employment relationship and carries the occupational title that the monitoring uses. It says nothing about the person’s eligibility for their profession.
• A work permit. It is the Ministry’s approval for an expatriate worker to work in the Saudi labour market, and the worker’s profession is recorded in it; its renewal is covered in our guide to work permit renewal for expatriate workers. Accreditation is a decision on the person’s eligibility, and the localisation guides frame it as something the worker obtains.
• Competencies. They are described in behaviour that can be observed at work, and they are evidenced by what a person was seen to do. Accreditation is a status recorded by a named body, and the one does not stand in for the other.
• Accreditation of an establishment or a centre. It is a decision about an entity, not an individual, and it is a separate subject.

What these documents share is that each can be found in an employee’s file, but each differs in who issued it and what it decides. Confusion between them can arise in a quick review of files, when the presence of a document is taken as proof of what the decrees require.

What an establishment controls in professional accreditation, and what it does not

Because accreditation is a decision of a body about a person, it places the establishment in an unusual position: an effect on the establishment arises from a decision to which it is not a party.

Granting accreditation lies with the body named in the decree, and we found nothing in the guides giving an establishment a role in that decision. A substitute document cannot take its place either, because the check runs on data taken from its source through the technical link with the supervisory bodies, not on paper that is submitted.

Accreditation status can also change without the establishment doing anything, and what the monitoring records about the establishment changes with it.

In the guides we reviewed, we found nothing on how often this check runs, on any channel through which an establishment is told that a worker’s accreditation status has changed, or on a period for putting matters right. We therefore describe none of these, and stop at what the guides state: the check is automated and its source is the supervisory bodies.

The registered job title comes before the professional accreditation question

Before asking whether a worker is accredited, the question is which occupational title is registered for them. The tables in the decrees are keyed to codes from the unified Saudi classification of occupations, and the automated monitoring takes occupational titles from the social insurance database. Where a worker’s registered title falls within the table of a decree, the accreditation question reaches that worker in the automated check.

The registered title is where the automated check starts, but it does not mark the whole reach of a decree. The guides also state that a decree applies to occupational titles and to the worker’s actual work, so a title outside the table is not a reason to treat the question as closed.

That makes reviewing registered titles a step that comes before reviewing accreditation, not after it.

Professional accreditation as a question asked more than once

The effect stated in the decrees is an effect on counting. Nothing in the guides we reviewed confines the check to the moment of hiring, and an accreditation status can change after it. The question therefore arises at two points:

• Before contracting. The question arises when a candidate is being considered for a profession within the table of a localisation decree. Knowing the candidate’s status at that point is information relevant to the hiring decision, not a requirement we draw from any text.
• After contracting. The question arises again for as long as the employment lasts. An establishment that checks once at appointment has answered the question for one moment, and the status can change after that moment.

We found no deadline or date in the guides obliging an establishment to do either. What is described above follows from the check not being confined to one moment; it is not drawn from a text that requires it.

The facts above are taken from the procedural guides published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development for the localisation decrees named, and from the Implementing Regulation of the Saudi Labor Law, issued by Ministerial Decision No. 115921 dated 19/8/1446H: Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation, clause 6 of item Third (the prior approval of another authority where the new profession requires one).

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.