Yet, this rosy picture faded away when I made the first mistake. The employment office was not able to transfer the sponsorship quickly enough after I paid in full all required amounts of money and even more. The owner of the office used different reasons for this slowdown. After he realized that I might file a complaint against him he tried to blackmail me. He said that he would file a complaint claiming I had hosted a fleeing maid! It is then when I felt let down. Luckily enough, one lawyer was aware of these kinds of fraud offices. This took place before employment offices became monitored. Furthermore, the lawyer told me that many maids came from Asia without knowledge or experience. They are asked to pretend that they had this knowledge and experience and show good manners in the first three months. This three-month trial period is important because during this period the employment office is accountable and after that it is the responsibility of the hosting family. I asked how this could happen especially when states deal with each other according to agreements. Also embassies are there! Yet some are good at being fraudulent. Furthermore, the cost of hiring a maid through these offices is extremely high and it would be much better if we are allowed to hire maids directly. The lawyer called the employment office and he managed to verify his identity. This office deals with fleeing maids. He said the market of maids is spread not only in the Gulf but also in Asia. Many maids lose their organs in these countries because of their dealing with fraudulent gangs.
Despite all strict procedures, this phenomenon is not coming to an end easily. Some maids are asked to stay for four months and then ask for permission to travel to see their families. When they fail to show up again, the employment office has a legal argument that its responsibility is limited to the first three months, the trial period. What happens to the maid that pushes her to change entirely after this period? Losses are high, the office takes all of its fees but the family suffers financially alone. According to studies, the losses of Saudi families due to the phenomenon of maids fleeing have surpassed SR50 million annually. The problem lies in the fact that there is no official body to protect the rights of the maid and the family alike. The Ministry of Labor has set new regulations such as forming big employment offices to work according to certain regulations. Yet, this will not end the phenomenon of fleeing maids that is seen as a parallel lucrative market.
One of the owners of an employment office told Arab News that the problem was not in the official procedures nor in the certified employment offices, but in the mock offices that have been working in an illegal and illegitimate way. This is true with Asian employment offices. Some of these Asian offices encourage the maids to run away to get more money. These Asian offices plant some agents in mock offices that are spread in the Gulf countries. Maids are provided with the phone numbers of new middlemen to facilitate their fleeing. A Saudi citizen said that he hired an African maid but she fled after one week. He informed the office and she was returned by the office. He agreed with the office to replace her with another one. The office promised to get another maid within 45 days. But it turned out that the office was employing the maid to work on a daily basis or on an hourly basis. But finally she was caught. The irony is that she was allowed to come into the country on his name, so this Saudi citizen is legally responsible and she was whisked back to her country on his expense!
A friend said that he hired a man from Asia. He proved to be good during the first few months to the extent that he was entrusted to deposit checks and money in banks. But after mingling with some Asian cab drivers, he began to exhibit different behavior. When he was asked to deposit around SR20,000, he went to the bank, but later he phoned saying that he was cleaning the car and was doing some maintenance services and that he would be back by afternoon. A while later, the police called the Saudi citizen telling him that his car was in a wrong parking position at the airport. The police had to tow it. It turned out that the driver has fled the country. Before that, he had asked for his passport for the sake of his own embassy. But he managed to run away and leave the country before the introduction of the optical system that indeed limited the possibility of fleeing. Three months after that, the Saudi citizen saw his former driver in a shopping mall. He chased him but it turned out that the former driver has already changed his passport and name altogether. The story with the Saudi citizen continued. He had to look for another driver. He was told that there was an office in one of the neighborhoods that could secure him a driver. He went there and the office asked for SR2,000 a month for the driver. The Saudi citizen had to accept this arrangement until he could find another one. But it turned out that this driver was also a fleeing one! It also turned out that he only received SR1,200 and the rest goes to the office.
One of the residents in Saudi Arabia, Salem Al-Taher, emphasized that he wanted to hire a Philippine maid provided that she knows English to help his children learn the language. He was told that as a resident, he did not have the right to bring a maid from Asia but this problem could be solved by transferring the sponsorship to his name. Al-Taher said his wife and he talked to one of the maids frankly about the nature of work. They are a small family with three children, the oldest being eight years. After one night, the maid said that she wanted to go back to the office. The moment that they arrived at the office, she tried to flee but she was caught and handed over to the embassy. But there are those who said that the moment a maid arrives in the embassy, she is given a new passport to travel or transferred to work somewhere else.
Owners of employment offices defend themselves by saying that their legal task ends after the three months trial period. They argue that abusing them or not paying them in full forces them to run away. They said that there was a need to come up with a formula that protects the rights of the three components: the family, the office, and the maid. They also say that they are not a judicial body and that following up the fleeing ones is a security issue that fall outside the domain of the employment offices.
One maid, Kamary, says that she came to Saudi Arabia before Ramadan and she wants to run away and work freely. She says that she first worked for a Saudi family for SR600, but after receiving abusive treatment she ran away. The employment office transferred her to work for other Saudi families on a daily basis. Now she earns some SR2,000 but she has had it, she just wants to run away.
In brief, the phenomenon of fleeing maids is less in Saudi Arabia than in the rest of the Gulf countries. The openness in these societies allows for this phenomenon to increase. The late procedures adopted by the Ministry of Labor in the Kingdom were effective. The insistence on establishing a big company to bring in maids will limit the scope of the problem. Sa’ad Al-Baddah — the head of the founding committee of a new Saudi company — said there will be mechanisms to protect all, including maids and families.
