RIYADH — Saudi recruitment offices have stopped recruiting housemaids from Bangladesh because they are not happy with the recruitment fee of SR7,000 per head decided by the Labor Ministry, according to local daily Al-Watan. The office owners also said recruitment offices in Bangladesh are unable to provide the required number of housemaids. Market sources said the cost of recruitment of housemaids from Bangladesh has gone up by about 80 percent which is costly for local recruitment offices. They said the recruitment cost has gone up to $1,800 while the ministry earlier set the cost at $1,000. They also said a number of Bangladeshi women do not want to come to Saudi Arabia to work as housemaids. Ibrahim Al-Nighaimish, an owner of a recruitment office, urged the ministry to implement the recruitment charges it had earlier agreed upon with Bangladesh. He was also surprised by the ministry's statement that the Bangladeshi side could provide about 500,000 housemaids. He said Bangladesh could only provide four to six housemaids every week which is a far cry from the half a million figure. Al-Nighaimish also said the training of housemaids in Bangladesh takes not less than four weeks which may force local recruitment offices to pay a delay fine. “The training institutes in Bangladesh are primitive and their number is very limited,” he added.
