Manpower agencies here have not been able to recruit Indonesian maids from October last year due to suspension of export of domestic workers by Jakarta.

Indonesian maids continue to be in high demand here, particularly by Qatari households, despite high recruitment charges.

Sources in local recruitment business told this newspaper yesterday that since Indonesian maids are in high demand their runaway rate was also high.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia-based news website aliqt.com reports that the contracts of all manpower agencies in the GCC to recruit Indonesian maids signed with their counterparts in Jakarta remain cancelled.

And that, perhaps, explains why no Indonesian maids are coming to Qatar.

The cancellation, according to aliqt.com, follows the decision of the Indonesian government to suspend the export of its women overseas to work as domestics.

According to Ayub Basalama, head of APJATI, which is the association of private manpower agencies of Indonesia, the government is framing new regulations to regularize the export of its women overseas to work as domestic helpers.

Basalama told aliqt.com that the association has protested with the government against its decision to suspend the ban on export of domestics. “We are suffering huge financial losses,” he was quoted by the website as saying. “The issue has also been raised in the Indonesian parliament.”

Basalama further said that the government plans to get all Indonesian domestics based overseas back home and allow them to return only after new regulations have been put in place.

The timeframe for introducing the new regulations that aim at overhauling the recruitment process of Indonesian women as domestics to work abroad, has, though, not been specified by the government.

The government has given the manpower agencies two options — to either wind up their businesses or wait for the new system to be put in place.

And so far nobody knows when the new system would see the light of day. Some believe it might take a few years. Basalama said that in the new system the Indonesian government plans to specify the work its women would do overseas as domestics.

“For this seven sub-categories of work for Indonesian domestics are being identified,” said Basalama.

The categorisation might, for example, lead Jakarta to specify if a maid would only do a babysitter’s job or cleaning work or cooking and the like in her employer’s household.

Image: mole.my

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