JEDDAH: Indonesian TV programs aired to distort the good image of Saudi households' treatment of their foreign housemaids have caused delays in the arrival of newly-recruited Indonesian housemaids to the Kingdom, following the alleged abuse of an Indonesian housemaid in Madina, an official said. Saudi foreign recruitment offices have also incurred late fee obligations to prospective sponsors, said Yahya Al-Maqbool, head of the recruitment committee in Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The Indonesian TV shows presented “unfair” reporting of the mistreatment of newly-arrived Indonesian housemaids at the Kingdom's airports, he said. The reports also aired footage of illegal foreign workers in crowds under a Jeddah bridge, he added. “These reports were made with the intention of raising the price of the recruitment of Indonesian housemaids to Saudi Arabia, or even of entirely halting the recruitment of maids to the Kingdom,” he said. Earlier this month, the Indonesia state of West Nusa Tenggara, which supplies nearly 70 percent of Saudi Arabia's demand for domestic workers, decided to halt sending domestic help to the Kingdom to put pressure on Jakarta to organize the recruitment of Indonesian workers in the Saudi Arabia. The campaigns against the recruitment of Indonesian housemaids to the Kingdom have moved the Saudi recruitment offices to call on the Ministry of Labor to reconsider an extension of the four-month period which the offices have to bring housemaids to the Kingdom in light of the new expected delays. The offices asked the Minister of Labor to scrap the late fees the offices are required to pay to the sponsor until a final resolution has been achieved with the recruitment offices in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines, blamed for the late arrival of housemaids. The Saudi recruitment offices are caught between the sponsor who only pays SR6,000 and the foreign workers unions in the foreign countries, especially the Indonesian workers union, which “plays games to raise recruitment prices and delays the arrival of the workforce to the Kingdom,” said Mohsin Al-Umairi, head of the recruitment office in the Makkah Chamber of Commerce. Saudi recruitment offices are still responsible for full customer satisfaction regarding domestic help. They have to compensate the sponsor if the housemaid or the driver arrives late, runs away, or is simply found unfit for household work, he added.
