JEDDAH — Recruitment of housemaids from Bangladesh has dropped by about 30 percent because of the greediness of brokers who raised the cost of a single contract to about $3,000, local daily Al-Madina said on Sunday quoting local recruitment offices. There are about 1.5 million Bangladeshi men and women working in the Kingdom of which about 2.4 million are house helps. Many of the Saudi families prefer Bangladeshi housemaids because of the low cost of their recruitment and also because they are paid low salaries ranging between SR800 to SR1,200. Owners of a number of local recruitment offices believe that the housemaids from Bangladesh do not receive proper training before they are sent to the Kingdom and said recruitment offices in Bangladesh do not give much attention to this issue. Ibrahim Al-Majid, owner of a local recruitment office, said importing house helps from Bangladesh is so disorganized and the recruitment offices in the Asian country tend to appoint brokers to deal with the Saudi recruitment offices instead of doing this themselves. He said a number of the Bangladeshi housemaids would ask to be returned home before they complete the probationary period of three months. "This has brought down the recruitment from Bangladesh by about 30 percent after the country used to provide about 50 percent of the housemaids," he explained. Mohammed Al-Baqami, owner of another recruitment office, criticized the involvement of brokers from the two sides and said they have increased the cost of recruitment and are sending unqualified housemaids. He said the routine procedures are very complicated in Bangladesh as the government would ask for many approvals and a lot of signatures before the recruitment contract was signed. Baqami said work visas from Bangladesh have stockpiled in the local recruitment offices representing about 85 percent of the entire recruitment visas from 22 countries.
