SAUDI ARABIA

Saudis spend SR26bln on house helps annually

April 17, 2018

Hazim Al-Mutairi



Okaz/Saudi Gazette

RIYADH — The Saudis spend about SR26 billion on house helps every year, according to figures released at the conference on "recruitment and domestic services" which was recently opened in Riyadh.

Riyadh Emir Prince Faisal Bin Bandar opened the conference and said the problems of the house helps must be immediately solved and that they should be given their rights without any delay.

"The emirs of all regions are ready to resolve any problem facing house helps with their sponsors without any hesitation," he said.

Prince Faisal asked the recruitment companies to provide suitable accommodation to house helps and said recruitment is an important humanitarian service.

The conference was told that the visas for the housemaids went up by 14 percent in 2016 while the government issued 1.14 million work visas for the domestic helps that year.

Saudi Arabia came fourth in the recruitment of housemaids after the US, Russia and Germany.

According to the statistics, about 86 percent of the Saudi families have private drivers while about 67 of them have a housemaid.

Chairman of the Human Right Commission (HRC), Bandar Al-Aiban, called for preserving the rights of house helps and said human rights in the Kingdom are highly protected since the time when King Abdul Aziz unified the country.

"The system of rule stipulated that the government should safeguard the human rights according to the Islamic Shariah and the Kingdom has codified laws that would protect these rights," he said.

Al-Aiban said under the labor laws, the employer should not engage house help in any work of slavery and should not delay the payments unless under a court rule.

He said the house helps should be given enough time to practice their religious rituals and should not be humiliated or disgraced.

He rejected the human trafficking and said a national committee was instituted to combat the crimes of human trading.

The Ministry of Labor and Social Development did not attend the conference on which the citizens and expatriates pinned a lot of hope to deal with the challenges and hurdles facing them especially the high salaries of the housemaids and the long recruitment periods which sometimes go up to a year and the presence of recruitment brokers.


April 17, 2018
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