Families in Jeddah and Riyadh live in constant fear of maids running away. Maids are sometimes like a rope that we place around our necks with them in control. When the Kingdom’s economic situation improved some years ago, many families bought new houses. With incomes increasing, houses got bigger; with responsibilities increasing, maids became a necessity. Families were too busy to clean up their houses and take care of their own children, so they recruited maids to help out.
The recruitment of maids was not confined to wealthy families; even families with limited incomes became dependent on maids: If the maid was sick, cure her and if she escaped, find her.
Since maids are willing to escape once they come to the Kingdom, gangs have been formed to harbor runaway maids. Drivers and taxi drivers are involved with driving escaped maids to homes for prostitution.
The same gangs find work for runaway maids with other families. I do not care what people call that but in my opinion it is human trafficking. We are against the abuse of maids and for them to live in bad conditions. However, at the same time, we want maids to live up to their contracts and fulfill what they came here for.
From the way I look at it, it seems like we, as a people, are extremely dependent on our maids for everything, even for making a cup of tea. We did not bring foreign workers here to work in factories, or to free ourselves from gaining knowledge. Instead, we have become fat and dependent.
We should evaluate our experience and think whether we should get rid of maids and drivers. Instead of developing ourselves, some of us are busy searching for a maid or processing her papers. We should not bother ourselves with whether the maid escaped alone or with the driver, or not yet.
