Saudi 'import’ returns

Press, 10 August 1981, Page 6

Saudi 'import’ returns

Professor Edward Moloney’s advice to anyone thinking of going to Saudi Arabia to work is “Be prepared.” “Anyone thinking it will be like living in New Zealand on twice the money would be quite wrong,” said Professor Moloney, who is professor of surgery at Riyadh University in Saudi Arabia.

Professor Moloney, who is 69, is visiting his sister in Christchurch. He is originally from Dunedin and a graduate of the Otago University Medical School. He worked in England after World War II and was professor of surgery at Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, until 1977.

He is one of many foreign doctors and nurses “im-

ported” by the Saudis to improve their health services.

When told about advertisements placed in New Zealand’s newspapers in recent years offering high salaries and luxurious living conditions to nurses willing to work in Saudi Arabia, Professor Moloney said the advertisements should not be believed.

“Certainly they would be paid more than they would get here, but they should be prepared for life in a completely different culture,” he said.

Because of the place of women in Saudi society, nurses should expect limits to be placed on their freedom and behaviour.

Saudi women had to wear veils in public at all times, and European women in Western dress were often regarded as “fair game” by Saudi men, Professor Moloney said. .As long as European women travelled in groups and took trouble to conform to the conventions of Saudi society, they would enjoy the experience. “Of course, treatment of nurses can vary from hospital to hospital. Filipino nurses working at one hospital I know of. are only allowed out for two hours a week, but at another they are given complete freedom,” he said. “It is the experience, the getting to know another cul-

ture while making a positive contribution to its progress, that makes it worth while,” Professor Moloney has been in Saudi Arabia for four years, since he retired from Radcliffe Infirmary in 1977, but he thinks he will leave at the end of this year. The Saudi rulers were making good progress towards modernising their country and increasing the living standards of most of their people, he said. They were pouring money into improving their education system, and they now had so much money that, even if the oil stopped flowing, the country’s economy could continue to prosper indefinitely just from the interest on investments.