Abdul Aziz Al-Roqabi, consul at the Saudi Embassy in Jakarta, recently urged the Saudi authorities to stop issuing labor visas for Indonesia until the country's recruitment offices comply with agreements signed with their Saudi counterparts.
The Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry last week organized a meeting which was attended by more than 40 Saudi investors and recruitment office owners. The meeting called for halting recruitment of Indonesian labor.
There are about 1.5 million Indonesians currently working in the Kingdom, and they contribute more than one-third of the East Asian country's foreign remittance annually.
Speaking to Al-Riyadh Arabic daily, the consul reaffirmed that bilateral relations between Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are strong and excellent, and that the Indonesian government has nothing to do with the current recruitment stand off.
"It is the Federation of Indonesia Workers and recruitment offices in that country which are primarily responsible for the crisis. Unfortunately, the recruitment offices in Indonesia, not exceeding five, are owned by Saudis and Arabs, and they earn a major chunk of the exorbitant amount of money collected through the recruitment of Indonesian labor, he said.
Al-Roqabi blamed these offices for exacerbating the Indonesian labor recruitment crisis. "These offices are responsible for steep hikes in recruitment charges at regular intervals without any genuine reasons. Moreover, they are also not keen in safeguarding the rights of Saudi sponsors of Indonesian domestic workers by fulfilling the terms and conditions of bilateral agreements, he said.
According to the consul, the Saudi Embassy has so far not received any order from Riyadh to halt the issuing of labor visas. "Hence, we are still continuing on with issuing visas. At the same time, we support calls to halt visas until a solution is found to the current stalemate," he said.
Al-Roqabi said that there are no justifications for the steep hike in recruitment charges in recent years. "The cost of recruiting labor from Indonesia had risen 300 percent from SR2,200 to SR6,600 within two years. This excludes visa fees and commissions for recruitment offices in the Kingdom," he said while noting that there is a trend among Indonesian recruitment offices to raise recruitment costs just before Ramadan every year. He also blamed brokers for the huge increase in recruitment costs.
The consul also drew attention to a huge rise in the number of runaway maids, which poses a big challenge to the housemaid market in the Kingdom. The flight of housemaids also incurs huge losses amounting to millions of riyals for Saudi families annually. "Contrary to the Indonesian government's claims that the 21-day training and orientation course for aspiring house workers is free of cost, we came to find that these offices levy fees amounting to $70-100 for the same," he said.
Al-Roqabi noted that Indonesians working abroad bring home about SR6.6 billion annually. "More than one third of this, SR2.2 billion, comes from Saudi Arabia. Any decrease in this amount would affect the country's economy badly," he said. According to the consul, Indonesian house workers get the highest salary in Saudi Arabia compared to other GCC states. "The monthly wage of Indonesian maids increased from SR600 to SR800 after demands from Indonesia two years ago. However, in other GCC states, the salary does not exceed SR700," he said quoting Saudi diplomats working in those states.
Underlining the need for stamping out the problem of runaway maids, the consul called for banning the recruitment of such workers by other GCC states also. "The introduction of a unified fingerprinting system binding all GCC states is the need of the hour. At present, a maid deported from Saudi Arabia can easily find job in other GCC states. The unified fingerprinting system should impose a ban for hiring runaway maids for a period of five years by any one of the GCC states," he said.
