JEDDAH — A number of Kuwaiti and Bahraini recruitment offices have taken advantage of the shortage of housekeepers in the Saudi market and started sending Asian labor to the Kingdom on visit visas, according to a member of the recruitment committee at the Dammam Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Badar Al-Nasser said some recruitment offices in Kuwait and Bahrain circumvent Saudi laws and enter into agreements with Saudi citizens where they provide citizens with workers from their respective countries, Al-Eqtisadiah daily reported. If they want to send over a housekeeper who works in Bahrain or Kuwait to the Kingdom, they first apply for a final exit from the country on behalf of the employee. They then ask the Saudi citizen who wants the housekeeper to apply for a three-month visit visa so that the worker can enter the Kingdom. When the visit visa expires, the citizen can renew it for another similar period. The only problem the housekeeper will face is she will not be able to apply for a residency permit (iqama). Al-Nasser has warned Saudi citizens who resort to such methods against legal consequences, noting that they are bringing over housekeepers without any guarantees protecting either party. He said the guarantees are valid only where the housekeeper has received a work visa, not a visit visa. Muhammad Al-Belaihi, member of the recruitment committee in the Council of Saudi Chambers, blamed the moratorium the Ministry of Labor has imposed on recruiting labor from some Asian countries for this problem. “The current market cannot meet the public increasing demand for domestic workers,” the official said.
