Cairo: Recruitment companies in Saudi Arabia have launched an initiative allowing payment of recruitment fees of domestic workers from Indonesia in instalments, Saudi media reported.
The initiative puts the recruitment fees exclusive value-added tax (VAT) at SR19,987 with a monthly instalment of SR1,750 exclusive VAT under a two-year contract renewable at wishes of both the employer and the worker.
The initiative aims to introduce a new service into the Saudi market to meet customers’ needs.
According to the initiative, the worker will remain registered in the recruitment firm’s name during the contract duration.
The first batch of domestic workers from Indonesia are expected to arrive in Saudi Arabia soon, five months after both countries sealed a related pact clearing the way for resuming their recruitment, Okaz newspaper reported earlier this week
However, the paper said the hiring cost for the Indonesian house workers is not known yet, raising fears that recruitment agencies will charge high expenses.
Last September, the Saudi Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development announced setting a cap on recruitment fees of overseas domestic labour and vowed to penalise violators.
“The Ministry of Human Resources is keen to maintain stability, regulate recruitment fees and price governance, and implement follow-up to ensure high quality of the service,” the ministry’s spokesman Saad Al Hamad said.
He specified them as SR9,500 per a worker from Uganda, SR10,000 from Thailand, SR10,870 from Kenya, SR13,000 from Bangladesh, and SR17,288 from the Philippines.
Non-committal recruitment offices will face shutdowns.
As part of its efforts to regulate the labour market, the ministry has set up the Musaned domestic labour programme 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.
The ministry has recently issued instructions regulating the transfer of domestic workers’ sponsorship and rules of recruitment and presentation of labour services with the aim of improving contractual relationship and boosting market attractiveness in the kingdom.
