DAMMAM — Housemaids from Bangladesh are expected to arrive in the Kingdom within the next three months, according to sources close to the recruitment offices in the Eastern Province. The sources said the Labor Ministry has opened its Musanid electronic portal to receive applications for housemaids from Bangladesh. They expected the issuance of work visas to start within the next two weeks, after which the house helps will complete the formalities so they can start arriving early July. The sources said applications for the recruitment of manpower from Bangladesh are only received through the portal by licensed recruitment offices. According to the sources, national recruitment offices have already started negotiations with their counterparts in Dhaka to start signing official contracts for manpower recruitment. Bangladesh has more than 200 recruitment offices but each Saudi national recruitment facility is allowed to deal with two of them only. The sources said the cost of recruitment of housemaids from Bangladesh ranges between SR8,000 and SR10,000 with a monthly salary fixed at SR800, while the recruitment cost of a housemaid from the Philippines may go up to SR18,000 with a monthly wage of at least SR1,200. It is expected that about 10,000 workers from Bangladesh will proceed to the Kingdom every month. Most of the recruits will be domestic helpers consisting mainly of drivers and maids. The Kingdom recruited 1.3 million foreign workers last year and intends to hire a similar number of workers in 2015. According to press reports in Dhaka, Saudi Arabia hosts about 29 percent of 9.17 million overseas Bangladeshi workers. The Kingdom halted hiring construction and agriculture workers from Bangladesh in 2008. Subsequently, manpower from Bangladesh dropped from 15,000 monthly arrivals to 10,000. Labor Minister Adel Fakeih announced on Jan. 21 that the door to import manpower from Bangladesh would soon be reopened. According to official Bangladeshi government statistics, there are 1.3 million Bangladeshis currently working in the Kingdom. Other official figures put that number at 2.63 million.
