Saudi Gazette report

JEDDAH — A bilateral agreement signed between Saudi Arabia and Indonesia for the resumption of housemaid recruitment by the Kingdom from the southeast Asian country is awaiting ratification by the parliament in Jakarta, Al-Madina reported on Tuesday quoting Minister of Labor and Social Development Ahmed Al-Rajhi.

Al-Rajhi said the agreement underlined that only the highly-qualified and well-trained housemaids would bet sent to Saudi Arabia.

The minister said, under the agreement, the monthly salary of an Indonesian housemaid would be SR1,200.

Meanwhile, Abdullah Al-Khaldi, director of recruitment in a private company, said the Indonesian housemaids were well aware of the customs and traditions in Saudi society and they were hard working, patient and could work under pressure.

“All the recruitment offices and companies are anxiously waiting for the resumption of recruitment of house helps from Indonesia to meet the rising demand,” he said.

Khaldi said the Indonesian government has taken a number of steps to ease the recruitment of housemaids including the issuance of the medical certificate in a week, which took a long time previously. It is also closely supervising the activities of the recruitment offices to reduce the role of middlemen, Khaldi said.

He said the training period for housemaids has been extended to 60 days instead of one month previously.

“The government has established a database to register qualified housemaids to make sure that only trained maids are sent to the Kingdom,” he said.

Khalidi expects the resumption of the recruitment of housemaids from Indonesia to start within two months.

The two countries negotiated for about eight years to resolve issues pertaining to employing Indonesian housemaids in Saudi Arabia and were able to sign an agreement for the resumption of recruitment on Oct. 11, 2018..