JEDDAH, 19 August 2003 — Saudi authorities yesterday announced plans to resume recruitment of domestic staff from Bangladesh after a break of 15 years.

The first batch of 500 Bangladeshi maids is expected to arrive in the Kingdom within two weeks. The new Saudi move comes after Indonesia increased the cost of recruitment of domestic staff by 100 percent.

Walid Abdullatif Al-Suwaidan, chairman of the National Recruitment Committee, told Arab News there were plans to open new markets for recruitment of domestic staff.

He said the Kingdom would recruit some 10,000 to 15,000 domestic workers this year. “They will be recruited with a three-year work contract,” he added.

Informed sources told Arab News that Saudi Arabia may halt recruitment from Indonesia if Jakarta fails to cut recently increased charges.

Under new regulations, Saudi recruitment offices have to pay for the insurance, medical check-ups, training and contract attestation of the Indonesian workers. As a result the cost of recruitment has doubled from $550 to $1,200 per person. There are some 180,000 Indonesian domestic workers in the Kingdom.

But a senior official at the Saudi Embassy in Jakarta has denied reports that Indonesian authorities were charging additional fees. “The report is absolutely baseless,” Consul General Dr. Abdullah ibn Nasser Al-Baseery told the Makkah-based Al-Nadwah Arabic newspaper. “We have not received any official information about the hike in recruitment charges,” he said.

The consul general said the Saudi Embassy in Jakarta was closely following up the recruitment problems and trying to solve them as quickly as possible. “The Indonesian authorities have not yet implemented their plan to increase recruitment charges,” he said.

Baseery pointed out that the embassy had issued 50,000 visas for Indonesian workers during the past months following a four-month freeze in recruitment of Indonesian manpower to the Kingdom.

“The embassy issues about 1,000 visas daily for Indonesian domestic staff, and we have not halted recruitment. What is being circulated are just proposals,” he added.

But Yousuf Badawood, deputy chairman of the NRC, said the committee had received information of a fee hike of about SR300 on the recruitment of Indonesian workers this week. “We are trying to stop this increase,” he said.