DAMMAM: Eastern Province recruitment offices have stopped taking requests for Indonesian labor following the refusal of contracting firms in Jakarta to take on new female workers due to the failure of Indonesian brokers to supply workers going back two months. A member of the Eastern Province Chamber of Commerce and Industry Recruitment Committee told Okaz/Saudi Gazette that Indonesian contracting offices had informed some national recruitment offices of the situation. “Those offices have said that all new recruitment procedures would now be done in the Kingdom due to their inability to supply housemaids at the current time,” said Adib Al-Abdul Jabbar. “The Indonesian contracting firms' decision has led to a number of offices halting business and ceasing to take on new requests as they wait for further developments.” He said that a number of offices in the Kingdom had been suffering from hold ups in business procedures for the last two months, noting that his office had 50 requests for foreign labor recruitment currently held up in Jakarta due to a lack of labor supply. “This is putting us in a very awkward position with our clients,” he said. “We have contacted the contracting firms involved but were given the choice of either waiting or accepting a refund.” He said the recruitment process involved three stages, firstly selection from rural villages and sending prospective housemaids on to Jakarta, then qualifying them as housemaids through training institutes on two-month courses, and finally carrying out the official procedures to send them to the Kingdom. “At the moment a lot of recruitment offices are facing large problems in getting through the first stage, as brokers are not sending housemaids to Jakarta,” Al-Abdul Jabbar said. He added that the reason lay in attempts to cause a significant rise in recruitment fees and have them supersede the fees that existed prior to the memorandum of understanding between the two countries, when fees ranged from between 700 and 800 US dollars for one housemaid. “Costs have gone to 1500 dollars since broker fees went up a few days ago from 500 to 600, meaning a total rise of around 400 dollars in recent times,” he said. “That is a high sum given the figure stipulated in the memorandum of understanding which set broker fees at 200 dollars.” He added that brokers were applying pressure by agreeing with officials in Indonesian villages to not supply labor to the Kingdom and send them instead to neighboring countries in the Gulf.
