JEDDAH, 27 May 2006 — A lawyer retained by the Indonesian Embassy has told Arab News that the sponsor of a maid that died of natural causes last year is not only refusing to pay her salary to her surviving family members, but won’t pay up to send her body home, either.
Nasser Al-Dandani confirmed the case brought to him by the embassy. The sponsor allegedly owes the maid 89 months worth of salary. “He (the late maid’s sponsor) is being completely uncooperative, claiming that he does not have the money to pay her salary or for the transfer of the body,” said the lawyer, pointing out that the police and the concerned ministries should intervene in the case.
Salastri Salamah, in her forties, died of natural causes ten months ago but her body remains in a Saudi morgue. Prior to her death, Salamah lived in the slave-like condition of receiving no salary for her labor for nearly seven-and-a-half years before she died.
Salamah was cut off from access to her country’s embassy because she worked for a family in a remote village outside Riyadh.
With more such cases of unpaid salaries being filed, the Labor Ministry has included in its new labor law, introduced in April, a rule that requires the sponsor to show financial ability to pay the salary of domestic servants and drivers.
