Gulf | Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia to put an end to abuse of maids
Saudi Arabia has reiterated its determination to put an end to the reported cases of abuse meted out to domestic workers.
- By Mariam Al Hakeem, Correspondent
- Published: 00:07 July 9, 2008
Riyadh: Saudi Arabia has reiterated its determination to put an end to the reported cases of abuse meted out to domestic workers. Ahmad Al Zamil, undersecretary at the Ministry of Labour, said that the authorities had taken all necessary measures to prevent the mistreatment of housemaids in the kingdom.
He also warns of taking stern action, including imprisonment, against those employers, who violate their maids' human rights.
"There are laws with provisions of stringent punishment in the kingdom that will be applied in the cases of those employers who are found guilty of abusing their maids or depriving them of their basic rights," he said in a press briefing here yesterday.
The ministry official was reacting to the US-based Human Rights Watch report released yesterday. The report asked Saudi Arabia to implement labour, immigration, and criminal justice reforms to protect domestic workers from serious human rights abuses that in some cases amount to slavery.
Ahmad Al Zamil said the rule of law in Saudi Arabia, which is based on Islamic Shariah, guarantees the rights of Muslims and non-Muslims alike. "We treat foreigners as guests in our country," he said.
Regret
The official expressed regret over the report of the Human Rights Watch accusing Saudi Arabia and other GCC States of failing to stop the abuse of maids.
"The report lacks credibility, which should be an essential component for such a work," he said.
Saudi Arabia hires its largest number of domestic workers from Indonesia. There are over 700,000 Indonesian housemaids in the kingdom and they represent nearly 70 per cent of domestic workers.
Speaking to Gulf News, Dr Bandar Al Hajjar, chairman of the Saudi National Human Rights Society, admitted there are some abuses regarding foreign domestic workforce in the kingdom.
"However, we cannot blame a single party alone for this. There are several parties, who should share responsibility for this. This is a delicate issue. The concerned laws to tackle this problem need to be updated every now and then."
Dr Al Hajjar said the society had received complaints about the mistreatment of some housemaids.
"We take prompt action on such complaints and refer the cases to the concerned authorities, as well as to court, and ensure employers who have committed abuses are penalised."
Meanwhile, an official source at the recruitment offices told Gulf News that the monthly salary of Indonesian maids increased from SR600 (Dh588) to SR800 last year.
"The Indonesian embassy endorses only the labour contract of housemaids with the increased salary, earlier made mandatory by the Indonesian government," he said.
The 133-page report released yesterday by Human Rights Watch urged Saudi Arabia to implement labour, immigration and criminal justice reforms to protect the workers, saying employers often face no punishment for such abuses.
The report said that rather than receiving justice, domestic workers, most of them migrants from Asia, are more likely to face counter-accusations of witchcraft, theft or adultery.
"In the best cases, migrant women in Saudi Arabia enjoy good working conditions and kind employers, and in the worst they're treated very badly. Most fall somewhere in between," said Nisha Varia, senior researcher in the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch.
"The Saudi government should extend labour law protections to domestic workers and reform the visa sponsorship system so that women desperate to earn money for their families don't have to gamble with their lives," Varia said.
Suhaila Hammad of Saudi Arabia's National Society for Human Rights dismissed the report as "unfair and one-sided".
She said: "We're being unjustly portrayed and the crimes against us by the workers are never mentioned."
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in its report, As If I Am Not Human: Abuses Against Asian Domestic Workers, concludes two years of research and is based on 142 interviews with domestic workers, senior government officials and labour recruiters in Saudi Arabia and labour-sending countries.
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