The citizens saw a glimpse of hope in this system, which would safeguard their money and protect them against threats to their security and stability.

It is not a secret that citizens have suffered a lot from the rising costs of housemaids. These costs are rising day by day, reaching more than SR10,000 including visa fees, recruiting office charges, medical costs and Iqama issuance fees, among others.

A Saudi citizen on a SR3,000 monthly salary will have to pay three months worth of wages to hire a housemaid. Another on a salary of SR5,000 will have to bid farewell to two months of wages.

When “Her Majesty” the housemaid arrives, she will probably work for him for a month or two before she disappears to work for another Saudi or foreigner for double her salary.

He will then be forced to look for a housemaid who has deserted her employer, either because his wife is working or because he has many children.

The citizens complain to the police and the Passports Department about the fleeing housemaids, the newspapers write extensively about the issue and public opinion is against these workers, but no one is listening!

The situation remains as it is. The housemaids are still escaping and there seems to be no solution to this problem in the offing. Some optimistic citizens believed that the fingerprinting system would act as a solution to their predicament, as any foreign worker who tries to leave the country will be caught and returned to his original employer.

They hope that the drivers and housemaids who escape from their sponsors and spend two or three years working for others will ultimately be caught, even if they obtain forged passports or travel documents from their consulates because their fingerprint data will out them. However we have not heard this happens at all!

I have written before about some cases that proved the fingerprinting system was flawed. My article was titled, “From Indonesia with Greetings.”  It told the story of an Indonesian housemaid who escaped from her sponsor after stealing a large amount of money from him.

After she reached home she called her sponsor to tell him that she had defied the fingerprinting system and reached home safely. Neither him nor me know how she pulled it off, but she did it.

This is not the end of the miseries citizens suffer from such unscrupulous housemaids and drivers. These escapees may be recruited again and attempt to come back with new passports.

They will be discovered at the airports thanks to the fingerprinting system and sent home, but only after the new employer has paid the recruitment costs and waited up to four months for the worker to come.

The sponsor will have then lost more than SR10,000 and now faces the major headache of getting his money back from the recruitment offices.

As a solution to this problem: why do we not implement the fingerprinting system in our embassies, so that violators will not be given visas and our people will not lose their money.

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