The National Recruitment Committee (NRC) has urged the Saudi Embassy in Colombo to make recruitment agencies in Sri Lanka abide by the conditions set forth in the unified contract, especially the deadline set for the completion of recruitment procedures of housemaids. The committee allegedly said the embassy ignores most of complaints made by private recruitment offices in the Kingdom about the malpractices of recruitment offices in Colombo. NRC member Hussein Al-Mettari urged the embassy to levy a fine on erring Sri Lankan recruitment agencies as stipulated in the unified contract, which says that a penalty of SR30 a day can be imposed on either party held responsible for a delay. He said the continual delays and trading in visas have forced local recruitment offices in the Kingdom to stop recruiting maids from Sri Lanka, especially as recruitment fees of housemaids have reached SR9,500 at a time when salaries for housemaids are fixed at SR650. He said the malpractices exercised by some countries reflected in the increase of salaries and recruitment fees would not stop as long as these countries monopolize the recruitment of this kind. Al-Mettari cited as an example the SR500 recently added by the Indonesian authorities to recruitment fees, adding that this kind of practice would continue unless new sources for the recruitment of housemaids are secured. He said that rumors about new increases in fees as Ramadan approaches are baseless because there are no indications of a surge in fees as well as the fact that it usually takes Indonesian maids two or three months to arrive, including the period set aside for their orientation training in Indonesia. Meanwhile, Al-Mettari excluded any possibility of a reduction in current recruitment fees.
