Attempts are being made to send Indonesian domestic workers to the Kingdom and other Gulf nations under various other job titles, such as nursing care workers, cleaners, and masseuses due to a decision by the Indonesian government to ban the export of maids from the country. Khalid Othman, a recruitment specialist with experience in hiring domestic workers, said that these Indonesian workers would not be sent from Indonesia under the category of domestic workers. Othman expected the recruitment cost for such workers to be as high as SR 15,000 to 16,000 for hospitals and private clinics. He pointed out that the ban on Indonesian domestic workers has led to a severe shortage of domestic workers, prompting recruitment agents to bring in these workers under different job titles. Meanwhile, Mansour Al-Jabri, another recruitment specialist, told Al-Riyadh that the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh had increased the daily limit of contracts to be sent by each Saudi recruitment agency for domestic workers from 10 to 20. The Saudi recruitment agencies have also been permitted to appoint four local agents each in the Philippines, an increase from two. He said that Saudi Ambassador to Philippines Dr. Abdullah Al-Busairi had put in tremendous efforts to ensure that new Saudi recruitment agencies were licensed to hire Philippine domestic workers. This would help in increasing the inflow of Philippine domestic workers to better meet the needs of the Saudi market, and shorten the duration of the recruitment process, which otherwise used to take up to several months.
