DAMMAM — Police clearance certificates, made compulsory by the Saudi Embassy in Dhaka for Bangladeshi men and women before recruitment to work in the Kingdom, has delayed the arrival of housemaids, according to national recruitment offices in the Kingdom. Bangladeshi workers have to wait for 25-30 days for police clearance certificates. The offices said they were surprised by the embassy's request to append police clearance certificates to required documents before completing the procedures for recruiting housemaids. They said the difficulty in obtaining this certificate lies in the fact that it has to be issued by the authorities in the city, town or remote village of the worker being recruited. According to recruitment offices, requests are piling up in the embassy at the rate of 1,000 a day. The offices said they stopped signing contracts to hire Bangladeshi manpower because they would not be able to honor an article in the contract that makes it obligatory for them to finalize recruitment procedures within a maximum period of 60 days. They said because of the lengthy procedures for obtaining a crime-free certificate, they will not be able to hire the manpower on time. There are 1,000 recruitment offices in Bangladesh, 100 of which are devoted to the recruitment of women. An estimated 1.28 million Bangladeshis work in Saudi Arabia, making it the largest destination for labor exports from Bangladesh.
