RIYADH, July 18: With the number of women in work force growing in Saudi Arabia, ministries are setting up more women-only work centres to meet the cultural requirements of segregation and to create jobs for women.

The Ministry of Telecommunications plans to set up three centres for women at the ministry in the first stage of the project, media reported on Wednesday. The country’s 13 regions and major cities will also get similar work centres at a later stage of the project.

Government departments in Saudi Arabia currently employ 250,000 Saudi women, while about 45,000 women work at private firms.

A recent report by the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that the number of Saudi women is expected to exceed that of men by 2010, when the Saudi population is estimated to cross 26 million.

However, according to a recent Oxford Business Group report, of the total eight million workers in the country, including the expatriates — only 670,388 of the 3.2 million employed Saudis are women.