This is the time of year when many families in Saudi Arabia are looking for extra help with domestic chores during the month of Ramadan – and many of them will be hiring housemaids from the Philippines or South-East Asia. It's a process that can lead to misery and even tragedy – some of which I have documented in this blog during the last couple of years.

On Wednesday, the Jeddah-based Arab News published a strong editorial calling for "the whole system of hiring maids in Saudi Arabia" to be reformed, along with changes in the attitudes of employers. It's worth quoting at length:

The way some Saudis treat their maids is outrageous and has given Saudi Arabia a bad name. They beat them and force them to work all hours, every day of the week, every week of the year while there have been some cases of sexual abuse too. Such behaviour should be punished with the full force of the law. Yet it seems at times that the legal system favours not the maid but the abuser, especially if he or she is a Saudi.

As for the complaint that some "run away", the very phrase denotes a sense of ownership. It is arrogant. Prisoners and slaves run away, not employees.

Given the way some maids are treated by their employers, it is hardly surprising they flee. They do so because they are abused and/or badly paid ...

Earlier this week, we published an article from a local Arabic paper in which the writer complained that maids were now in a position to demand more than SR2,000 [$533] a month because of disputes with their home countries over their treatment. He also alleged that "most housemaids" vanish after stealing valuable objects. He himself had had two maids "run away". The article has created quite a considerable stir, and rightly so.
There are those who pay their maids far less than a thousand riyals a month for a seven-day week, working from six in the morning till late at night — SR800 is quite common. This is not acceptable. Frankly even SR2,000 a month is unacceptable. How many Saudis would work all hours for that? 

... Maids are not slaves. They are human beings and should be treated with dignity and respect — and part of that respect is a decent salary. As it stands the present system of employing maids is fundamentally rotten, not least the practice of not paying them for the first six months or more in case they disappear. The whole system needs government attention and changes in the law.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 29 July 2011.