Many Saudi families have started hiring illegal housemaids due to complications in the legal recruitment of domestic help. Some Yemeni women who have entered the Kingdom illegally are offering their services to families who need them urgently.

Saudi families have been struggling to hire domestic help following a ban by Asian and African countries to send housemaids to work in the Kingdom.

The Ethiopian government had earlier canceled 40,000 visas for housemaids destined for the Kingdom and permanently stopped sending any manpower, local media reported previously.

Other countries also refused to send domestic helpers to the Kingdom following reports of crimes and accidents last year. These conditions have contributed to an underground trade in housemaids who have entered the Kingdom illegally.

The Saudi border guards have captured about 259,296 illegal infiltrators mostly from the southern border. At the same time, the border guards succeeded in arresting 4,343 smugglers of which 70 percent comprise Yemenis who were illegally trying to infiltrate Saudi borders, according to the 2013 statistics of the Directorate General of the Border Guards.

Most of the illegal Yemeni women live in harsh circumstances in the Kingdom. Many of them are uneducated with barely enough money to survive on. Therefore, they exploit the housemaid crisis in Saudi Arabia despite the risk of being arrested for staying in the country illegally.

Yehia Al-Maqboul, chairman of the Recruitment Committee at Jeddah Chamber for Commerce and Industry said, “Many families have been forced to hire illegal housemaids due to complications of recruitment.”

Speaking to Arab News he said, “However, these families can only hire illegal maids in the short term or until they are able to recruit housemaids legally.”

Although, many Yemeni nationals work as domestic helps illegally, their number is still limited.

Yemeni families who entered the country illegally often allow their daughters to work as housemaids temporarily. Unlike other Asian countries, Yemen has no agreement with the Saudi government to send housemaids to work in the Kingdom.

The Labor Ministry had earlier announced plans to target new destinations in Arab speaking countries to recruit house maids as Saudis prefer Arabic-speaking maids and to reduce the demand for Indonesian and Ethiopian domestic help.

The Labor Ministry took the initiative of contacting officials in 15 Arab countries despite the fact that most Arab countries have not officially agreed to send housemaids to work in the Kingdom.

“Last Ramadan, I hired a Yemeni woman to work as a housemaid for the whole month. She was better than Asian maids and had good cooking skills. However, she is living illegally in the Kingdom without an iqama,” Ali Mohsen who lives with his family in Jeddah told Arab News.

“It is very difficult to recruit housemaids from different countries and we need urgent services in our homes. Therefore, we usually hire Yemeni women who are willing to work as housemaids on a temporary basis. They visit our homes everyday to work for two hours,” Jaber Abu Numai, a Yemeni resident in Jeddah told Arab News.