The Ministry of Labour has appointed a team to study the high cost of labor imports and their comparisons to recruitment fees in other GCC countries.

It issued an order fixing the ceiling for the recruitment costs from Bangladesh and Niger, while the rates for other countries such as the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka and Vietnam will be announced following completion of studies.

The ministry has fixed 60 days as the maximum time to supply a worker by the recruitment establishment. A customer only needs to pay 25 percent of the recruitment cost at the time of signing the contract; the remaining amount is to be paid when the customer gets a written memo from the recruiting company about the payment and stamping of the visa on the worker’s passport from the Saudi Embassy in the labor exporting country.

Fines to be paid by an agency when it fails to supply a worker within 60 days will be SR100 for each day of delay and the limit of the fine is SR3,000. If the delay exceeds 30 days, the contract will automatically be canceled and the company or agency will have to return the money paid by the customer.

The ministry attributed the current delay in recruitment to the manpower supply companies in exporting countries that prefer to export male domestic and commercial workers instead of supplying housemaids.

To tackle this problem, the ministry has asked the Saudi Foreign Ministry and its embassies to insist that not less than 25 percent of the total manpower they supply to the Kingdom should be housemaids. The embassies to act on this directive are in New Delhi, Dhaka, Hanoi and Colombo and the consulate in Mumbai.

Any problem in the recruitment of domestic workers? Complain to the ministry by e-mail ([email protected]) or at the website www.musaned.gov.sa or call 19911.

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