Saudi Arabia: Domestic labour allowed from 29 countries

Cairo: Recruitment of overseas domestic workers to Saudi Arabia is now available from 29 countries, the kingdom’s labour authorities have said.

Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, India and Ethiopia topped the list of overseas recruitment last month, according to a Saudi government platform in charge of domestic labour.

The Musaned platform added that 75,653 recruitment contracts were registered last month.

Topping the list of recruited jobs were those of female and male domestic workers, house guards, chauffeurs, house farmers and cooks.

Saudi labour authorities have recently sought to regulate the domestic labour market in the kingdom.

To this end, Musaned has been launched by the Ministry of Human Resources to help customers learn about their rights and duties, and related services including visa issuance, recruitment requests and contractual relation between the employer and the worker.

Musaned also helps regulate and automate the recruitment process starting from giving the customer access to all recruitment offices in the kingdom and picking the most suitable, depending on a host of factors including prices, and previous clients’ feedbacks without the need to visit them.

The Ministry of Human Resources has also set maximum cost limits for hiring overseas domestic workers from different countries.

The fees include SR9,500 per worker hired from Uganda, SR10,000 from Thailand, SR10,870 from Kenya, SR13,000 from Bangladesh, SR15,000 from Sri Lanka, SR17,288 from the Philippines, SR7,500 from Burundi, and SR6,900 from Ethiopia, exclusive VAT.

The ministry has said it is necessary to conduct contracting via Musaned, being the official recruitment platform.