A crippling shortage of Asian workers is forcing households to resort to illegal means to fill their housemaid vacancies. The shortage is due to a Ministry of Labor ban on the recruitment of Indonesian and Filipinos workers. The ban is forcing many Saudi families to illegally hire foreign nurses to work as nannies. However, Ministry of Labor spokesman Hattab Al-Eneizi warned that “this is in violation of employment laws and those families who are caught will be fined SR2,000. He also said that polyclinics who supply the nurses will be fined “from SR10,000 to a maximum of SR30,000.” “Hiring nurses to work as nannies is illegal and violates the conditions of labor licenses. It also violates Article 38 of the Labor Law which forbids employers from having employees do work that is not mentioned in the employment contract,” he said. A Ministry of Health spokesman, Dr. Khaled Mirghalani, said that this is “an illegal procedure and violators should be penalized.” The Director General of pharmaceutical licenses, Dr. Ali Al-Zawawi, said, however, that “the Ministry of Health cannot control this phenomenon because it inspects hospitals not houses.” “The most important thing for the Ministry of Health is that the nurse has a legal visa and license. If she has been hired as a nanny, it is the Ministry of Labor which is responsible for such situations, not the Ministry of Health,” Al-Zawawi said. Authorities hope that once the ban on Philippine and Indonesian workers is lifted, the problem will disappear. Until then, many are skeptical that desperate households will be dissuaded from the illegal practice. According to an Al-Watan newspaper study on healthcare center's and polyclinics, it costs SR5,500 per month to hire a nurse to work as a nanny.
