Indonesia’s terms for housemaids ‘outrageous’

Indonesia won’t send housemaids to the Kingdom until Saudi Arabia opens special courts for its nationals and creates laws to prohibit servitude, said Saad Al-Battah, head of the national committee for recruitment.
He said they also wanted the Kingdom to provide protection to runaway maids and allow them to communicate with their friends in the Kingdom.
Al-Battah expressed his outrage at Indonesia’s conditions, calling them “funny”. He also wondered what kind of “friends” the maids would communicate with.
Indonesia’s conditions are unacceptable as they are questioning the judicial system in Saudi Arabia, he said. The Kingdom’s laws indeed prohibit slavery, cruelty, prostitution and sexual assaults, he added.
Officials at the Ministry of Labor were surprised to receive a memo from Jakarta with conditions adding to the agreement both sides had reached previously.
Al-Battah said that Jakarta now wanted the iqama issued in one month. This is against local procedures, which require three months for the issuance to test the worker.
He said it is strange to see the memo also demand that the maids be provided with halal food as only halal food is allowed in Saudi Arabia.
“The memo sent to Saudi Arabia is a copy of the agreement that Jakarta has signed with Korea and China,” he added.
Jakarta stipulated it wanted Saudi Arabia to inform its embassy when any Indonesian nationals were arrested, while this is part of the Geneva Convention that Saudi Arabia signed and respects, he said.
Al-Battah said there would be no monopolization by recruitment offices to Indonesian laborers once recruitment is open again for that country.
“Brokers used the crisis between the two countries in an unpatriotic way,” he said.
Al-Battah commented on the recent murder by an Indonesian maid of a four-year-old child in her care. He said the national committee had always asked to let maids take a psychological test before sending them to their employers and that the medical tests are not enough.