level Indonesian government delegation of officials from different ministries will soon visit the Kingdom to find a solution that will allow Indonesians to work in the Kingdom, Okaz/Saudi Gazette has learned from high-level sources in Jakarta. The moratorium on sending Indonesian workers to the Kingdom, which was announced by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was meant to be temporary, until solutions that guarantee the rights of workers and their Saudi sponsors have been reached, the sources said. The Saudi ban on recruiting workers from Indonesia and the Philippines had a big impact on Indonesia because it suffers from a high unemployment rate exceeding 12 percent, the sources noted. “All recruitment applications between Saudi recruitment offices and their Indonesian counterparts, whose processes have not been completed and no passports have been issued to workers, will be halted by the Indonesian government in the beginning of August,” Saad Al-Baddah, chairman of the National Committee for Recruitment, warned Saudi recruitment offices. He called on these offices to find an alternative to recruit housemaids for clients. Al-Baddah ruled out the last option, at least for now. The Saudi Ministry of Labor decided to suspend visas for recruiting housemaids from Indonesia and the Philippines due to conditions imposed by the governments of both countries, which infringe on the privacy of Saudi citizens. Following this, the Philippine government quickly sent an official delegation to contain the crisis and it appears that Indonesia will do the same. There are more than 2.1 million Indonesian workers in the Kingdom and their monthly remittance to their homeland reaches about SR90 million, according to official statistics. Unofficial statistics estimate the number to be much higher. __
