Cases of abuse rise for Saudi foreign help

Rights groups say millions of foreign workers should be protected by Saudi labor law.

from the September 6, 2007 edition

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According to HRW, approximately 2 million women from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and other countries work as domestic helpers here. Many of them face a slew of problems, from late payment of salaries, extended working hours, beatings, and sexual assault, during the length of a typical two-year contract.

An indication of how bad things can get for domestic workers are the shelters for runaway maids run by both the Philippine and Indonesian diplomatic missions in Riyadh and Jeddah.

"There are around 300 maids now at our shelter in Riyadh, which is down from around 560 maids a few months ago, and there are around 45 maids at the shelter in Jeddah," says Eddy Zulfuat, vice consul at the Indonesian Embassy in Riyadh.

"We have around 35 domestic helpers in the shelter here in Jeddah," says Philippine Consul General Pendosina Lomondot. "We have had more in the past, but never at the levels of the Indonesians."

The Indonesian Embassy has been so swamped with cases of abused workers that it has hired a full-time Saudi lawyer to deal with all of the criminal cases.

"We continue to hear of abuses being committed against migrant domestic workers as employers do not change that much in terms of negative attitudes toward domestic helpers," says Ellene Sana, the head of the Center for Migrant Advocacy in Manila. "Domestic workers are considered virtual slaves by employers who feel that they can ill-treat them as they please, without the slightest remorse."

The fate of abused workers in Saudi Arabia is further complicated by the fact that labor-exporting countries in Asia, pressured by growing populations, feel an obligation to send larger and larger numbers of workers overseas in search of work. This has caused many of these governments not to press to hard concerning abuses against their workers out of fear that protesting too much could offend Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.

When Indonesia tried a few years ago to raise the minimum age and salaries of maids sent to work abroad, a coalition of employment agencies in the Gulf threatened to look elsewhere in Asia for maids and drivers. Jakarta soon backed down on the salary front and continued to send maids to the Middle East.

The Philippines recently raised the minimum salary of maids sent abroad to $400 a month, but some doubt that the Philippine government will have the means of enforcing it 100 percent.

The flip side of all of this is that some Saudi employers feel aggrieved by the high cost of having to pay for the air ticket, visa, and labor agency fees to bring a maid from abroad to work for them. Saudi newspaper opinion columns are full of stories of recently hired Indonesian maids running away within weeks of arriving. Their employers regularly accuse underground networks of Indonesian labor brokers of luring their maids away with promises of better pay and working conditions in the black market.

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