JEDDAH: The Indonesian state of West Nusa Tenggara, which meets 70 percent of the Kingdom's requirements for house helpers, has stopped sending workers to Saudi Arabia, officials there confirmed. In a telephone conversation, Zain Al-Abdeen Majedi, governor of the state, said the move is a protest by the state's government because it believes the federal government in Jakarta should organize recruitment of Indonesian workers to the Kingdom, especially after reports that two maids from the state were mistreated in Madina and Abha. He said the ban, which began this week, would continue unless the federal government responds to the state's demand. A number of recruitment offices in the Kingdom have called for freezing recruitment of house helpers from Indonesia, even if it is temporary, so a backlog of work visas in the Indonesian labor agencies can be processed. Mohsin Al-Emairi, head of the Recruitment Committee at Makkah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has pleaded to the Ministry of Labor to stop issuing the visas until the 50,000 pending visas are finalized. Hussien Al-Harithy, owner of a private recruitment office, described the ban as a big blow to the recruitment market. The fact that so many of the Indonesian house-helpers come from one area has placed a heavy bureaucratic burden on officials there, which has delayed processing of their documents and slowed the arrival of Indonesian maids who have been granted work visas, he said.
