The suggestion was made following the latest reports of maid abuse.
“Ambassador Gatot Abdullah Mansyur is very much concerned over the issue and is constantly in touch with Jakarta,” the source told Arab News on the condition he not be named.
News of a possible ban on the deployment of Indonesian maids to the Kingdom comes in the wake of the death of Kikim Komalasari, 36, whose body was found on Nov. 11 on a roadside in Abha. The body was found with lacerations and a slashed throat. The maid's sponsor and wife have reportedly been detained, but no further details about charges, if any, were available on Sunday.
Komalasari's death came when the public was still seething over the torture of 23-year-old Indonesian housemaid Sumiati Salan Mustapa.
Indonesian House of Representatives Speaker Marzuki Alie suggested a halt to sending domestic workers to the Kingdom if authorities failed to seriously tackle the issue.
The recent reports of maid abuse and murder brought to memory the case of Nour Miyati, the maid brought to a Riyadh hospital back in March 2005 in a critical condition. Miyati was suffering from gangrene to her fingers, toes and a part of her right foot in addition to other signs of physical abuse and was brought to hospital by her sponsor. Doctors had to amputate some of her fingers and toes. Miyati's case was never resolved after authorities accused her changing her allegations.
Miyati had alleged her sponsor tied her to a sink in the bathroom and left her there for a month and beat her up severely. Investigators questioned her again in the absence of a legal advocate and then said she retracted her allegations. A judge initially sentenced her to 79 lashes for making false allegations, but later retracted the sentence. In the end, the wife of the sponsor was lashed 35 times after admitting to beating the maid.
Meanwhile, activists have long complained that Indonesia lags behind other labor exporters, such as the Philippines, when it comes to protecting its workers.
“The death (of Komalasari) could not have come at a worse time for relations between Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. As commentators were railing against the Sumiati incident, the Saudi ambassador to Indonesia was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a small but vocal group of protesters gathered outside its embassy,” the Jakarta Globe reported on its website on Saturday.
Saudi Arabia does not have a memorandum of understanding with Indonesia regarding migrant workers.
Problems encountered by migrant workers in other countries, like Malaysia and Jordan, have led to frequent moratoriums on sending workers to those countries.
For his part, Gov. Zainul Majdi of East Nusa Tenggara, the province where Sumaiti is from, declared his own moratorium on sending maids from his province to Saudi Arabia.
