Women working as janitors, pedicurists and manicurists and in other low bracket professions suffer from loneliness, longing for their families, and are barely able to make ends meet because of their low salaries. There is rarely anything called a salary hike for these unfortunate workers. Female workers not working as housemaids but in other fields such as in beauty saloons and as janitors in malls across the country come to Saudi Arabia mainly because they have husbands who do not work or are drunkards and the responsibility of running the household falls on them. Sheila, from the South Indian state of Kerala, is a janitor responsible for the women's toilet at the Dhahran Mall, Al-Khobar. She has a family of seven: four children, her parents and a husband who is an alcoholic. “I have to take care of my kids and my parents. If I sit, then who will feed them and send them to school?” she said. Sheila gets SR500 a month plus a small room for accommodation in Al-Khobar. “I send only SR1,000 every three months to my family in Kerala.” With the rising inflation in India and costs of commodities too high for the poor, she says it is not enough. “My kids go to school. Books, stationery and everyday eating expenses are very high. The money I send is not sufficient. I am not planning on coming back here after my vacation in July,” she sighs. Many workers also deal with long shifts and sometimes double shifts. However, more than the money, the thing that women workers miss most about staying and working here is their children. “My kids are growing up and I feel guilty that I am not with them to raise them as I would like to. I have no choice, but to also take care of their monetary needs,” says Sameera, a Filipino, working as a manicurist in a local saloon. “I have no problems as such with the working conditions or my employer who is a sweet lady. But I miss my children very much. It is harder for the mothers to stay away from their kids than the fathers,” she says. Many women who come to work in Saudi Arabia often pay a lot to the recruiting agencies in order to get a visa in the hope that they might get to improve their monetary status, pay for the education of their children and secure their futures. They may or may not be able to meet their goals and even though they make the ultimate sacrifice of tearing themselves apart from their children for their sake, they are bound by guilt that only a mother can feel. __
