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Saudi
Women Can Work as Maids in Saudi Households
Khaleej Times - 30 April, 2008
Arab
and Saudi women can work as maids in Saudi households and the Ministry of
Labour could not interfere if Saudi women, due to difficult financial
conditions, wished to work as cleaners and cooks in people’s homes.
Labour Minister Ghazi Al Gosaibi on Sunday criticised people who reject the
idea of Arab and Saudi women working as maids in Saudi households. “We are a
society which is full of guardians,” Al Gosaibi told reporters in Riyadh while
answering a question about a proposal to have Egyptian housemaids in Saudi
homes, as suggested by the Egyptian Minister of Labour.
Al Gosaibi said Saudis sponsor over 1.5 million foreign maids, the majority
from Southeast Asia. Even though the issue of needy Saudi women working in
Saudi households was brought to the ministry’s attention in the past,
conservative elements in society rejected the idea.
“I see that any job, whatever it may be, is an agreement between an employer
and the employee. It is a matter of accepting and refusing. If there is a woman
whose circumstances force her to work in a kitchen for a few hours and she
accepts the payment, then I cannot come and say, ‘How could Saudi women take
such jobs?’ Our mothers and grandmothers used to do such jobs. And they still
do in the Bedouin culture,” he said.
“The ministry or any other concerned authority has no business if a woman is
satisfied with her payment. And I have no right to say that a Saudi woman
should not be dubbed a ‘housemaid’,” Al Gosaibi said. He said the Ministry of
Labour would not intervene if labour exporting countries chose to raise the wages
of their nationals coming to work in the kingdom.
“It is not my business to interfere if a country decides to raise the price of
recruitment. I cannot simply threaten to ban them. This is not ethically,
legally, or civilly acceptable,” he said, and added that people can simply hire
cheaper labour from other countries.
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