WITH the moratorium on recruitment from Ethiopia, we have closed down all four sources previously supplying us with housemaids. In addition to Ethiopia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand were major suppliers of household help to the Kingdom. Concerned Saudi authorities decided to suspend recruitment from two of these countries (Ethiopia and Thailand) while the other two (Indonesia and Philippines) decided not to send housemaids to the Kingdom over some disagreements. Whenever a source of domestic workers is closed, the Labor Ministry will hasten to inform us that it is looking for new markets that supply housemaids and is about to sign recruitment agreements with them. Regrettably, no new supplier of housemaids has yet been contracted. All those that the ministry was able to sign contracts with were secondary suppliers who are unable to satisfy the huge demand. Though bilateral labor agreements govern our relationships with these countries, we have so far not appointed any labor attaché in any one of them. There are also no offices in these countries for the National Recruitment Committee (NRC) to liaise with them on the recruitment of housemaids, or act as an intermediary between the Kingdom and these countries to resolve possible issues Saudis might face there. There are more than a million housemaids in the Kingdom. The Labor Ministry is the arm of the government while the NRC is the arm of the private sector. Both arms are not as effective as the NGOs and legal labor organizations in these countries, which ferociously defend the rights of their workers and get to impose their conditions on us.
