MAKKAH, 3 November 2006 — Police in Makkah have arrested an Indonesian couple who ran an illegal maid syndicate that included the harboring of runaway maids and providing residents with their services.
The Indonesian man and wife were caught when police stormed the couple’s home arresting them with other members of the syndicate and a number of overstayers and runaway maids. The maids were handed over to the Passport Department for further investigation.
Nuri Suleiman, the Indonesian head of the syndicate, and his wife Kumreya Ahmad targeted Indonesians who had overstayed their Umrah or Haj visas. According to the police, the couple would also encourage other maids to run away from their sponsors with the promise of making more money.
Suleiman confessed to taking between SR100 and SR200 in commission from each maid and said that it was a lucrative business. The couple had been in the business for over three years.
The authorities said the couple’s business had been flourishing and that the gang had many Saudi customers wanting to hire illegal maids. The runaway and illegal maids were also being paid well for their services.
The Indonesian man and his wife have been jailed for a month and fined SR1,000 each for the crime.
Kumreya told Arab News that she came to the Kingdom four years ago as a maid on an employment visa. “I escaped after one year and together with my husband decided to start our own business. We would look for runaway maids and illegal overstayers and hire them out to Saudi families,” she said.
Kumreya said she had a long list of Saudi customers looking for maids and that she would arrange the services of a maid for no less than SR1,000 a month. “We used to take a commission from the maid and a SR200 commission from the family. We managed to make a lot of money from this business and also started our own network with agents back in Indonesia supplying us names of pilgrims who wanted to come to Saudi for Umrah and then stay back and work as maids,” she said.
The couple would contact potential maids once they arrived in the Kingdom and later harbor them in their house.
“We would collect money from the maids at the end of each month and then remit it to Indonesia because we always feared that one day we would be caught,” said Kumreya.
Col. Ayied Al-Luqmani, chief of the Passport Department in Makkah, said the couple would be deported to Indonesia after serving their prison terms. He appealed to Saudis against dealing with such people and instead urged them to report escaped maids to the authorities.
