The case of housemaids running away from their employers has reached an epidemic level now bursting social and economic problems that are draining the resources of the Kingdom, said Col. Yousef Al-Qahtani, spokesman of Dammam Police. “Not a single day passes without a housemaid running away from her employer, marking a daily occurrence here in Eastern Province that has spawned social and economic implications,” Qahtani said. “The situation is not much better anywhere in the Kingdom,” he said. Saudi families spend money and hurdle difficulties to hire housemaid, he said. It has become costly to recruit a housemaid from Southeast Asia with fees going up to SR10,000 for a maid who would run away once she is here. And if a housemaid runs away from her employer, the employer loses all the money put into hiring her. The money usually includes the cost of the visa, recruitment fees, and plane ticket. It has now become a common practice for housemaids to abandon their jobs upon their arrival in the Kingdom, he said. But where do they go? “A runaway housemaid will either seek shelter within her community, or find employment somewhere. In either situation, she would become a social and security burden because consequently all her operations become illegal and would imperil all people she would be in contact with” Qahtani said. A runaway housemaid usually lives with a group of her nationality which would help her find a place to work. Without appropriate documentation, any employer hiring a runaway housemaid as a part-timer would be investigated for breaking the law and penalized. The security situation may be vulnerable at a house with an illegal housemaid as it becomes highly difficult to file a complaint once she commits a crime and escapes, he said, blaming the employer for being part of the problem. In the Eastern Province alone, currently more than 100 housemaids from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka are detained at the Dammam Social Center, he added. These runaway housemaids have one of two options: reconciliation or deportation. Social centers across the nation are managed by the deportation authorities. But when they are deported, employers will usually attempt to recruit replacement housemaids, which would only reproduce the same thing, according to a welfare officer of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office at the Philippines embassy in Riyadh. About 20,000 runaway housemaids from Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka have escaped from their employers for alleged abuse and maltreatment. “Abuse against housemaids has become lately as a common situation in the Kingdom, which eventually prompts housemaids to escape looking for a better work environment. Saudi authorities and foreign embassies are both challenged by this problem,” Al-Qahtani said. Some runaway housemaids resorted to prostitution and other illegal activities because they were unable to legally secure a new employer. __
