Mansour Al-Khudairi Al-Watan A topic that had preoccupied many Saudis over the past few months has been that of housemaids. It has become almost impossible to obtain a housemaid with the hold on recruitment from many labor-supplying countries. Then there were some gruesome crimes that were committed by housemaids from a certain country against a number of Saudi families. The housemaids have become a rare commodity and a profitable means of trade through the black market. The only victim in the process is the Saudi citizen who has been cheated and robbed by recruitment companies. These companies took his money and gave him promises that were never fulfilled while he kept desperately waiting for a driver or a housemaid. The options open before him for the recruitment of a domestic help has shrunk to a country or two. The Ministry of Labor has blocked all options in the citizen's face, leaving him at the mercy of the recruitment companies and offices that have left no stone unturned to fleece him. The Labor Ministry should take the bulk of the blame in the predicament the citizen is facing in obtaining domestic help. It has stopped the recruitment of manpower from southeast Asia, which is the preferred source for the Saudis. The ministry has agreed to the complex rules and conditions requested by some southeast Asian countries for the employment of their manpower. These conditions are in the favor of the housemaid rather than the citizen. If the ministry had left this task to the private sector in the Kingdom, namely the chambers of commerce, the results would have been better and faster. The negotiations to reach agreements on the work contracts would not have taken this much time. With all doors closed in their faces, the citizens have rushed to the new recruitment companies which also failed to solve their problems. The companies could only recruit housemaids from one or two countries and at very high prices. The fees of recruiting a housemaid have reached more than SR15,000 while the cost of transferring her iqama is not less than SR25,000. Some recruitment companies ask prospective employers to pay the salaries of a housemaid for 24 months in advance, which will be close to SR40,000. This is another difficult position for the citizen because he may lose his money for nothing if the housemaid turns out to be inefficient or if she escapes to another employer. The recruitment company will not give him a guarantee to refund the money he has spent on the employment of a housemaid. The undersecretary of the ministry was recently quoted as saying that negotiations with Indonesia to resume recruitment from that country have entered their last lap. He said the Saudi and the Indonesian sides have reached a satisfactory formula for the recruitment of domestic helps from Indonesia. He also said they were now waiting for the Indonesian side to fix a date for the signing of a final agreement on the matter. I hope that the issue will soon be solved to bring relief to the citizens.
