RIYADH: The Sri Lankan government has called on Saudi insurance companies to submit quotations for mandatory insurance to cover Sri Lankan domestic aides such as maids and drivers in the Kingdom.
Colombo has drafted the new insurance scheme because the Saudi government’s current insurance system does not include domestic aides working in Saudi households. “We have already introduced the scheme in the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. The Kingdom, which has the largest concentration of Sri Lankan housemaids in the region, will be the third country to launch the program,” said Kingsley Ranawake, chairman of the Sri Lankan Bureau of Foreign Employment.
Ranawake said the decision to introduce the scheme follows talks in May between Ghazi Al-Gosaibi, the Saudi minister of labor, and Keheliya Rambukwella, the Sri Lankan minister for labor welfare.
During the talks in Riyadh, Al-Gosaibi agreed to the system of providing insurance cover to Sri Lankan maids. Colombo is presently in the process of appointing a Saudi company to provide the insurance cover, the costs of which will be met by Saudi sponsors.
“Such an arrangement will ease problems affecting employees, employers and the two governments in case of the eventuality of circumstances such as the repatriation of bodies, disabilities, emergency medical expenses and legal assistance,” said Ranawake.
“The insurance cover would also include return air tickets if a sponsor failed to meet a worker’s costs of return travel,” he added.
Ranawake said the proposed scheme would provide security to workers, encouraging them to look at the Kingdom as a prospective destination of employment.
More than 80 percent of the 550,000 Sri Lankan workers in the Kingdom are housemaids whose earnings make up a large portion of foreign remittances to the country. Remittances from Sri Lankan overseas workers are the island’s second largest foreign exchange earner.
Ranawake added that the Kingdom has agreed to increase the monthly wage of Sri Lankan maids and drivers to SR650 starting January. He warned that recruiting agents who fail to ensure the payment of salaries as stipulated in work contracts would be blacklisted.
