Ambassador Golam Moshi

Bangladesh Ambassador Golam Moshi said on Tuesday that 36,000 maids are ready in Dhaka to be sent to the Kingdom for various Saudi homes for work.

“We send around 4,000 maids a month to the Kingdom,” he said, pointing out that the total number of his country’s maids in the Kingdom has reached 20,000.

Moshi was refuting a recent report in the local newspapers that 150 Bangladesh housemaids have fled from Saudi homes during the past seven months. “This is not true! There are some 200 housemaids waiting for deportation with the consent of their respective sponsors for various other personal reasons,” he noted, indicating that bad weather and health conditions went against their favor in the Kingdom and that the maids are going following an amicable settlement with their respective sponsors.

Bangladesh has some 1.2 million workers in the Kingdom who are mainly skilled and semi-skilled workers located in various parts of the Kingdom.

On a recent agreement between Dhaka and Riyadh, Bangladesh housemaids will return into the Kingdom beginning June this year. He said the two countries enjoy excellent bilateral relations.

“Our relationship is bound by religion, culture and common understanding,” he stressed.

The envoy said the agreed wages for the Bangladesh housemaids in the Kingdom is between SR800 and SR1,000. However, he added that an average woman in Bangladesh earns around SR800 in the country, saying that an increase in wages in the Kingdom could attract more maids from Dhaka.

He also said the maids who come into the Kingdom for employment are given a comprehensive orientation program at the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) in Dhaka.

“They are taught spoken Arabic, Saudi culture, the Kingdom’s social environment and how to use the household appliances such as the vaccum cleaner, refrigerator, washing machine, microwave oven,” he said.

Housemaids working in the Kingdom mainly come from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Eritrea, Vietnam, Nepal, Philippines, India and Bangladesh.

Common complaints of housemaids in the Kingdom include non-payment of salaries, breach of work contract, ill-treatment, harassments and miscommunications due to language barrier.

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