The recruitment of female workers as housemaids has increased, but not all are employed as household service workers. Many of the recruited female workers who arrive in the Kingdom are employed, many forcibly, as beauticians in beauty salons, seamstresses in dress shops, and other jobs, and not as housemaids as stipulated in their visas, according to officials in Asian embassies. “This practice resorted to by employers is a violation of the contract. This becomes doubly disadvantageous to the workers by cutting their salaries originally provided in the employment contract. Both violations are rampant,” an official of an Asian embassy processing recruitment applications said. “During the last six months job recruitment applications filed with labor offices of Asian embassies to purportedly recruit housemaids have increased. Because the Ministry of Labor does not issue visas for beauticians or seamstresses, the need for these workers is easily circumvented by applying instead for housemaid visas,” the official, who requested anonymity, said. In recent years, beauty salons and dress shops ran and managed by Saudi women have flourished because of the profitability involved, hence the increase in demand for these workers. These workers, including housemaids, share the same problem of receiving reduced salaries. “For example, housemaids from the Philippines, under the law of that country, and as stipulated in their contract, should be paid a monthly salary of $400, which is roughly equivalent to SR1,500. Upon arrival in the Kingdom, a new contract is substituted with new salary as low as SR600. Dispute in salary is often the cause why housemaids, and those who work as beauticians and seamstresses, run away and seek the support of their community and the Philippine embassy,” an agent of a Philippine recruitment agency in Al-Khobar said. He said his recruitment agency has stopped recruiting and sending housemaids to the Kingdom. “The problem of run-away housemaids has become a big problem for Philippine recruiting agencies and embassies,” he said.
