THE Ministry of Labor has promised us that the problem of a shortage of housemaids would soon be solved. Everybody was expecting this to happen before or during the fasting month of Ramadan, which arrived and departed without any solution being found. The need of many families for housemaids continued, unabated, during and after Ramadan. In fact the situation has been further aggravated by a dispute between the ministry and recruitment companies, which has become one of the reasons that the problem has continued without a solution. The ministry issued a number of decisions over the past few days with the aim of improving the housemaid situation and the recruitment market. One of these decisions set the maximum period required for the recruitment of a housemaid at 60 days. Recruitment companies are now also blocked from collecting the whole cost of recruitment at the signing of contracts between them and the prospective employers of housemaids. Recruitment companies are allowed to collect only around 25 percent of the contract value at signing, with the balance to be paid once an employer has been notified, in writing, that their housemaid has actually arrived in the Kingdom. The ministry also established a new fine if housemaids and workers do not arrive in the Kingdom within two months. In such cases, recruitment companies will be fined SR100 for each day beyond the two months, with the maximum amount not exceeding SR3,000. If a worker or housemaid has not arrived within three months, the contract between the recruitment firm and the employer is canceled. In this case, the company will have to repay all expenses incurred by the employer. As soon as these decisions were issued, recruitment companies officially opposed them. They openly defied the ministry and a number of them stopped recruitment altogether. These companies are expected to go before the courts and call for the ministry's decisions to be rescinded. Their argument is that the ministry's decisions cannot be implemented, as they would cost the firms dearly. Over the last few days, recruitment companies began dismissing their Saudi employees, up to 80 percent in many cases, as they ran out of resources because of the halt in recruitment. They took this stand to exert pressure on the ministry in the hope that it would review its decisions. The victims of this raging battle between the ministry and the companies are none other than Saudi citizens. They are caught in a fight in which they have no hand. Saudi citizens are primarily concerned with finding a housemaid, nothing more. Yet, the question remains: What is the solution to this protracted problem? One practical solution would be for the ministry itself to be involved in recruitment. It could establish its own recruitment companies through its investment arms. The ministry could, in this case, recruit housemaids and provide them to the citizens at reasonable prices, without the need for the services of the private companies and offices. The recruitment companies have stopped recruiting foreign manpower. The very companies that were licensed by the ministry to carry out this work have failed to solve the problem. Therefore, it is imperative that the ministry itself carries out recruitment of foreign manpower. This should be done as quickly as possible. There is no need to wait any longer for recruitment companies to solve the problem.
