JEDDAH: A delegation from the Indonesian labor recruitment federation will meet in Riyadh Sunday with the Saudi National Committee for Recruitment (NCR) to discuss issues related to contracting Indonesians to work in Saudi Arabia. Sa'ad Al-Baddah, Chairman of the NCR, said the meeting with the federation, which oversees the operations of some 100 of the largest recruitment offices in Jakarta that send labor exclusively to the Kingdom, hoped to “return things to the way they were”. “The meeting follows instructions from the Indonesian Ministry of Labor which wants to address issues impeding the sending of labor to Saudi Arabia, and will discuss the cancellation of conditions imposed by the Indonesia Embassy,” Al-Baddah said. The main topics of discussion, he said, will include controlling the rise in recruitment costs and setting prices agreeable to both parties, as well as how to tackle Indonesian recruitment offices that accept visas without having labor available in order to bargain over prices with Saudi offices. “They should either have the labor ready with their offices or not take on visas,” he said. “Work is going on to look at ways to penalize and deter such practices.” Al-Baddah said it was hoped that the meeting would help “return things to the way they were”. “The Indonesian Ministry of Labor has expressed a desire in that regard,” he said. The costs of recruitment from Indonesia have seen successive rises since 2008, reaching their peak between 2010 and the beginning of 2011 when they exceeded SR10,000, resulting in an increase in the number of housemaids abandoning their sponsors to find work for higher wages elsewhere and individuals overstaying the permitted periods of their visas.
