An official source at the Indonesian Embassy in Riyadh indicated Jakarta is ready to negotiate the conditions for sending domestic help to the Kingdom, which hosts over one million Indonesian housemaids.

“We are ready either to revoke or negotiate on some of the terms and conditions set for the recruitment of housemaids and drivers from Indonesia,” said the official.

The embassy’s gesture came at a time when the recruitment of Indonesian labor came to a halt following the suspension of recruitment by the Saudi authorities due to Jakarta’s tougher positions, Al-Watan Arabic daily reported. 

However, Saudi recruitment authorities have swung into action to grab the positive overture. Reacting to the comment of the Indonesian Embassy, Saad Al-Baddah, president of the National Recruitment Committee at Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the committee officials would meet a delegation of the Indonesian Federation of Workers at the chamber headquarters on Monday to sort out the hurdles in the way of resuming the recruitment process.

Speaking to the newspaper, an official source at the Indonesian Embassy said the Indonesian government urged its Saudi counterpart to facilitate a meeting between the officials of the two ministries in Riyadh in order to work out a joint mechanism for negotiations on the resumption of recruitment of workers to the Kingdom.

The source, who requested anonymity, said the meeting is between two private recruitment organizations representing both the countries, he said.    

The National Recruitment Committee had earlier rejected the conditions demanded by the Indonesian Federation of Workers for the recruitment of housemaids and drivers from Indonesia.

This was in the wake of an announcement from the Kingdom’s Indonesian Ambassador Gatot Abdullah Mansyur, who said his government had drawn up a new work contract that must be authenticated at Indonesian missions after being signed by the sponsor and recruitment office in the presence of an Indonesian diplomat.

Reiterating the committee’s position in this respect, Saad Al-Baddah said that these conditions were not acceptable.

“If they want to resume recruitment they must scrap these unilateral conditions. If they stick to the conditions, then we are not at all obliged to abide by them,” he said at the time.

It is noteworthy that the committee had earlier instructed the manpower recruitment offices in the Kingdom to halt hiring domestic staff from Indonesia unless they withdrew these unjust terms and conditions. Most of the recruitment offices as well as the citizens have adhered to the directive. As a result, there has been a drop of 90 percent in the number of visa applications for Indonesian labor during the first months of the current year comparing with the same period last year.

Meanwhile, a number of citizens urged the authorities concerned to open doors for recruitment from other countries in the wake of the “unfeasible and impractical” terms and conditions demanded by Indonesia and the Philippines for recruitment of domestic help. They urged the committee to facilitate hiring of domestic workers from some other Asian and African countries such as Nepal, Vietnam, Ethiopia and Kenya where the recruitment cost is much less comparing with that of Indonesia and the Philippines.