Expat wives work to make ends meet

Expat wives say they have no choice but to work to send money back to their native countries or simply to survive in the Kingdom. This comes in response to an official warning from the Ministry of Labor telling expatriates not to allow their wives to work in the private sector.
“I have been working as a teacher’s assistant at an international school in Jeddah for the past five months to earn extra money since food, rent and other expenses have been increasing in the Kingdom. We usually live on my husband’s salary of SR 2,000 per month and save my salary or send it back home,” Cherie, a Filipino housewife, told Arab News.
Amina, an Indian housewife in the Kingdom, said she thinks it is unfair that the Ministry of Labor puts these types of restrictions on working housewives. “They should be more concerned with establishing a minimum wage for expat workers that is comparable with the rising cost of living. Only then would housewives not feel the need to help their spouses make ends meet,” she said.
Even housewives who are married to Saudis have voiced their viewpoints on the warning. “This problem does not only affect foreign laborers in the Kingdom. Despite being married to Saudi citizens, we too are prohibited from working since our residency permit (iqama) is sponsored by our husbands and not the company we work for,” Brenda, a working British housewife married to a Saudi and a mother of four, explained to Arab News.
She added that many companies are willing to hire housewives despite the “iqama issue” due to the wealth of skills they bring to the company that many Saudi employees simply do not possess. “This amounts to a win-win situation for the company and the housewife, who in most cases, is working to help supplement her family’s income,” she said.
She concluded by adding that she personally is working because her Saudi husband has been unemployed despite giving in his CV to numerous companies since they came to the Kingdom to live nearly 10 years ago.” My salary is often times the only financial means we have to be able to support ourselves and our children,” she confirmed.
Nonetheless, earlier this week in a statement, Hattab Al-Enazi, spokesman for the Ministry of Labor, said: “Expatriate women’s work in the private sector is not approved by the ministry’s regulations. It is impermissible for any expat woman who has come to the Kingdom for any purpose other than employment to work.”
He continued by adding that although they have not found any violations of expat women working in the private sector, inspectors are currently conducting field tours in different sectors to ensure compliance with the Kingdom’s labor laws.