IT is an endless drama in which the main actors are expatriate drivers and maids. For some Saudi homes, it has become a never-ending nightmare: Maids run away after working for a few months, forcing families to make the difficult choice of paying recruitment fees once again and waiting for months for a new maid to arrive or hiring a maid from the black market. Taking advantage of high demand, maid brokers fuel a black market for smuggling maids and helping them run away from their sponsors, Al-Riyadh daily reports. The brokers in return get a commission from families and from the maids themselves for helping them find employment, the paper said. Experts say the problems caused by domestic servants will never end unless citizens and expatriates cooperate and work together to eradicate these negative practices. In most countries around the world, families abide by the law and do not hire domestic laborers who are in violation of the law. In the Kingdom, the situation unfortunately is different. Here, families welcome maids who violate residency regulations and even pay them above market rates. It means society will continue to suffer from the presence of illegal domestic workers as long as violators get jobs and decent salaries for breaking the law. Economist Fadhl Al-Boenain said the country is full of domestic servants, enough to satisfy demand, but they haven't been distributed among the Kingdom's regions evenly. Many citizens recruit domestic laborers and once they arrive in the Kingdom, they rent them out to others as a means of earning money. For example, a broker can get as much as SR4,000 while a maid is paid a mere SR700 a month. “This is why many maids run away searching for better jobs and this is where the role of expatriate brokers who take advantage of maids' desperation to find work and families' desperation to find a maid comes into play,” he said. “Most of the times, maids are lured by high salaries. When they run away, they discover the bitter truth of falling prey to expatriate brokers. There is no job stability because every month they work for a new family and this family may have more members than the previous one,” Al-Boenain said, while adding that some maids are forced to engage in illicit activities in order to make more money. According to Al-Boenain, some sponsors spend as much as SR20,000 in recruitment fees for drivers. After a few weeks of arriving in the Kingdom, the driver runs away in search of more money and favorable employment conditions. If he does not find a suitable job, he may engage in illegal activities to make money. “These activities pose a threat to the Kingdom's security and also disrupt the labor market,” he said. Dr. Salih Al-Dabal, assistant professor of criminology at King Fahd Security College, said the Kingdom's labor-related problems cannot be solved unless citizens and expatriates do not report such violations to the authorities. “The problem here is not about an expatriate who has run away from his sponsor; it is more than that. The runaway worker might turn into a criminal or engage in unethical practices that spread vice in society,” he said. “Runaway domestic servants are treated well in the Kingdom. We welcome them and open our homes to them. The only way to stop these negative practices is by cooperation and collaboration. Imposing hefty fines that reach SR100,000 on families who employ violators of residency regulations will not eradicate these practices,” Al-Dabal said. “Families will continue to provide jobs and shelter to maids who may or may not have previous criminal records. It's a risk that they take but it can cause more harm than good,” he added. Al-Dabal said it is a regrettable that citizens who should observe the law are involved in these practices. He claimed the black market for runaway maids would not exist had it not been for the help of some citizens. “The government has done everything it can to curb these practices by fining violators and citizens who commit such violations. Every member of society should shoulder the responsibility of ending these practices,” said Al-Dabal. “Only once we get rid of these violations will maids and drivers think twice before running away because they will know that no citizen will hire them. Domestic servants will realize they will suffer immensely if they think about running away.”
