Arab News, By GHAZANFAR ALI KHAN & SARAH ABDULLAH, Mar 6, 2011
RIYADH: In a move to ensure more protection for housemaids in the Kingdom, the Indonesian government has imposed tighter restrictions on the recruitment of women workers.
“Even today, Jakarta continues to send domestic helpers to Saudi Arabia, but the number has drastically gone down,” said Wishnu Krisnamurthi, a spokesman for the Indonesian Embassy.
Krisnamurthi said several new measures to define the relation between the employer and the maid have been announced. The measures require employers to provide details like the workload in their homes and the number of family members including their photographs, copies of identity cards and police certificates. A sponsor or employer seeking a maid or a driver must earn a minimum salary of SR6,000 or SR8,000 a month respectively.
“The new requirements are to help us protect our workers and also convince Indonesian workers back home wishing to work here that they are safe. They are afraid due to the latest cases of abuse they have seen reported,” a source at the Indonesian Consulate in Jeddah told Arab News.
Nonetheless, many Saudis have said the requirements are outrageous and impossible to fulfill.
“Why would I disclose such personal information to a recruitment agency?” asks Hassan Mohammed, a Saudi engineer. “I shouldn’t have to provide information about my job, household or criminal record merely to recruit a maid or a driver. Who will ensure that this information will remain confidential and who will protect my rights if the worker comes to the Kingdom and works for us and then falsely accuses a member of my household to run away or blackmail us?” he added.
“Some of the Indonesian Embassy’s requests are impossible, are beyond the necessary request for information required to recruit a worker and are delving into matters of security for the country and its citizens,” Maj. Gen. Abdullah Al-Sadoun, a member of the Shoura Council reportedly told Al Riyadh newspaper. Al-Sadoun said that it appears the Indonesians are using recruitment as a way of gathering sensitive national information on citizens’ personal lives.
“In my view, I understand the embassy has a right to protect its workers, but the Kingdom has a good security and police department that can protect them without the need to request personal information from Saudi citizens and at the cost of national security,” Al-Sadoun said, adding that there have been at least a few individual cases of abuse but these are being investigated and are rare.
He said that it is not right to have all sponsors sign a letter to uphold human rights when the system in Saudi Arabia protects all nationalities, Saudi and non-Saudi.
Saud Al-Badah, chairman of the National Recruitment Agency at the Saudi Chamber of Commerce, also reportedly agreed that the requests are going too far and impossible to fulfill.
It has also been announced that the Indonesian Embassy and its Consulate will not approve the employer-worker contract unless the employer meets all conditions. Krisnamurthi added that the recruitment of housemaids and their deployment in Saudi households continues despite the recent announcement made by the Saudi Arabian National Recruitment Committee (SANARCOM) to suspend the hiring of domestic helpers.
“In fact, there is no ban imposed by the Saudi government on our domestic helpers,” said Krisnamurthi, adding that these new rules have been formulated to ensure more protection for domestic helpers in the Kingdom.
SANARCOM, he said, had also asked for the creation of a single apex private organization in Jakarta with a mandate to deal with the workers. He added that Indonesia has three national bodies entrusted with the task to coordinate with foreign employment agencies.
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