The Ministry of Labor has finalized its side of the standard labor recruitment agreement with Indonesia and it is now up to Jakarta to decide whether to endorse it, a senior Saudi ministry official said.

Deputy Labor Minister for International Affairs Ahmad Al-Fehaid announced in a statement that details of the agreement had been discussed at a recent meeting in Jakarta.

Representatives from the Labor Ministry, Saudi Ambassador to Indonesia Mustafa Ibrahim Al-Mubarak and the Kingdom's consul general took part in the discussions on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Al-Fehaid said that although there was agreement in principle, the issue of salaries had not been decided and would have to be agreed upon by the private sectors of the two countries. Al-Fehaid also said that increasing the number of training centers in Indonesia was also discussed at the meeting.

In February last year, the two countries signed an agreement to regulate the recruitment of domestic workers to the Kingdom. The accord was signed by Labor Minister Adel Fakeih and Muhaimin Iskandar, Indonesian minister of manpower and transmigration.

According to this agreement, it was agreed to prepare the standard labor recruitment accord to streamline the procedures for the deployment of Indonesian domestic aides. It was also agreed that the new recruits should not have criminal records or other problems at home.

Indonesia supplies a large number of workers to the Kingdom. The other housemaid-exporting countries are Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Morocco.

The Labor Ministry said recently it was taking steps to recruit housemaids from 11 countries — Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Laos, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.