JEDDAH, 9 April 2007 — Foreign and local recruitment agents are eagerly awaiting the Kingdom’s new regulations governing the contract and employment of housemaids. It is thought that the hiring procedure will become “difficult and costlier.”
This follows the Philippine government’s move to increase the monthly salary of its housemaids to stand between SR750 and SR1,500, coupled with several strict recruitment conditions.
Indonesia, which supplies 60 percent of the 20,000 maids that arrive in the Kingdom every month on employment visas, is also likely to press for an additional allowance for insurance and a salary hike.
Hamsataki, a Jakarta-based federation of Indonesian workers’ offices, is demanding for an increase in recruitment costs for domestic workers from the current SR6,000 to SR7,100. The increase will result in an increase in Indonesia’s revenue from labor export and will see the workers receive better treatment from overseas employers.
In fact, the Indonesian demand comes in the wake of new measures taken by the Philippines, which ranks second in terms of employment of housemaids in the Kingdom.
Local agents and employers say they are concerned about the latest moves by Indonesia and the Philippines, as that would increase the cost involved in hiring housemaids and also cast an additional financial burden due to salary hikes.
Hamsataki Chairman Yunus M. Yamani said the new proposal was in the interest of Indonesian maids.
“With this additional sum, we will end up spending a total of SR7,100 toward hiring an Indonesian housemaid,” Fahad Sharif, a local agent said on behalf of Saudi employers. “This will cast more financial burden on employers. Instead, the cost of hiring domestic workers should be brought down,” he said, adding that Hamsataki might have come up with the proposal following the Philippine move to increase the monthly salary of its maids.
The Philippine move is coupled with an increase in the number of conditions recruiters must meet for the country to approve foreign contracts, said Saad Al-Baddah, chairman of the national committee for recruitment at the Riyadh-based Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
He told local media that the committee brought the Philippine move to the notice of local authorities so that employers could avoid the additional burden and also tackle the Philippines’ stringent measures in recruiting maids.
Dharmakirty Syailendra Putra, consul at the Indonesian Consulate General, told Arab News that the salaries of his country’s domestic workers have remained the same so far. The minimum specified is SR600 for housemaids and SR800 for male domestic workers.
“We have as yet no official information about the insurance proposal,” he said, adding that the authorities in Jakarta were considering new proposals to seek an increase in salaries and allowances of domestic workers. Employers here incur fees of SR3,000 to SR5,000 in the process of recruiting Indonesian domestic workers, he added.
Work on the first-ever regulation governing the relationship between housemaids and their employers and defining obligations and rights of either party is nearing completion, Qusai Al-Felali, director of the Labor Office, said in a report. “The present labor law does not cover many aspects relating to domestic workers, especially housemaids.”
According to estimates, there are two million domestic helpers in the Kingdom.
