DOHA: Manpower agencies in the GCC states are to form a union in a bid to have collective bargaining power over their counterparts in countries sending workers, to help reduce spiralling recruitment charges for housemaids.
Recruitment business representatives from the region are meeting in Saudi Arabia on January 5 to set up the union.
The union is to be known as a ‘Task Force’ functioning under the aegis of the Federation of GCC Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
The Task Force hopes to negotiate with manpower agencies in labour-exporting countries and fix the recruitment charges for the benefit of everyone involved in the maid supply chain.
“It is the manpower agencies in those countries that are actually responsible for the increasing recruitment charges for maids,” said an official.
“It is, therefore, necessary to rein them in,” said Ali Hamad Afeefa, who represents local manpower agencies in the Qatar Chamber, representative body of the private sector.
In remarks published yesterday by local Arabic daily Al Raya, Afeefa said that people usually blame local manpower agencies for the high recruitment charges, which is not true.
“That is why we have decided to form a union because not we, but the agencies in manpower exporting countries are responsible for raising the charges for maids’ recruitment.”
“We hope to be able to develop ways and mechanisms whereby we are able to deal with those agencies and help reduce the recruitment charges that have lately been going through the roof,” Afeefa said.
There are four major maid-exporting countries to the GCC states — Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India.
Manpower agencies in the GCC states deal with them to recruit maids and other domestic helpers. Afeefa said that in Qatar alone there are about 300 licensed manpower agencies supplying domestic helps.
In Qatar, recruitment charges for Indonesian maids range from QR15,000 to QR16,000 ($4,394). For Sri Lankan maids, the charges are QR12,000 to QR13,000 and for Filipinos, it is QR12,000.
The charges are quite low in Qatar. In Saudi Arabia, to hire a Sri Lankan maid, one needs to dole out some 22,000 to 25,000 Saudi riyals.
Afeefa said charges for Indonesian maids compared to maids from other nationalities are high in Qatar because their visas are not easily available.
The reason for lower recruitment charges for maids in Qatar in general is that they prefer Qatar to other GCC states since it is easier to lodge complaints with authorities in case of harassment by employers.
Afeefa said a key step the proposed union would take is to unify employment agreement contracts for maids in the GCC. The idea of a union of GCC manpower agencies is not new. It was mooted in Bahrain some nine years ago, according to Afeefa. It was put on the back burner until a meeting of regional recruitment agencies convened by Kuwait’s Awqaf Ministry took place some 45 days ago and it was decided to revive the idea. The decision to set up the ‘Task Force’ as a representative of the union was taken at a meeting of key industry representatives in Riyadh a week ago, said Afeefa. The Peninsula
