Citizens and experts say that this is largely due to a lack of law enforcement, and a black market run by expatriates offering huge salaries, especially during Ramadan.

The Passport Department said that it had received 6,500 reports of maids who had absconded at the end of last Shabaan, the month before Ramadan, amounting to 217 cases a day.

This situation has led to many families preferring to hire maids through brokers for Ramadan, instead of going through the official process, which includes waiting for months and paying up to SR20,000 in recruitment fees.

Sultan Al-Harib, a citizen, said: “I hired an African maid through a well-known recruitment office. She worked about a year for SR700 a month, which was increased later to SR1,000, until she met an illegal maid with whom she ran away.”