A surprising sight among the thousands of undocumented women from Indonesia and the Philippines at their consulates here is Saudis seeking to recruit them as housemaids.

Arab News has seen many Saudi women with their husbands and sons trying to convince these Asian women to work for them.

The rising demand for maids has been caused by various factors including cost and the approaching month of Ramadan.

Saudis know it is cheaper to recruit maids living in the country, considering that recruiting from outside costs around SR 15,000, and sometimes as much as SR 30,000.

There has also been a limited supply of housemaids from the Philippines recently with tightening of rules to protect their rights. The Philippine and Saudi governments only recently signed an agreement allowing Philippine maids to return to the Kingdom.

Indonesia still has a ban in place on sending its maids to the Kingdom. Saudi recruiters have been hiring Ethiopian and Sri Lankan maids. There have been reports that they are now considering getting maids from other Arab countries.

With rising demand, Asian workers are now able to negotiate salaries as high as SR 2,000 a month. Prior to the announcement of the grace period, maids from the Philippines were paid about SR 1,000 and those from Indonesia SR 600 if Saudis recruited them directly from their countries.

The Philippine Consulate in Jeddah has received 12,000 passports of maids who have run away from their original employers. Most now want to stay and work in the country.

The Indonesian Consulate has not revealed how many passports of runaway maids it has received, but it is believed to run in the thousands.

Runaway maids earned in the region of SR 1,500 for Philippine workers and SR 1,000 for Indonesians, with brokers hiring out their services to Saudi families for a commission.