I love cashmere...
Posted on 07/08/2006 5:33:46 AM PDT by white trash redneck
JEDDAH, 8 July 2006 — Cases of Asian maids running away and leaving their employers in desperate situations seem to be a growing phenomenon. We tend to hear many cases of maids being abused by their employers but at the same time there are multiple cases of families themselves being abused and treated inappropriately by their maids.
Recently, having only been in the Kingdom for two days an Asian maid ran away from her sponsor’s home. In another case one maid demanded her employers send her back to her home country saying working, as a maid, was not befitting her and in a third case a maid left her sponsor’s house at a critical time when the lady of the house had given birth just a few days earlier.
According to Al-Watan newspaper, many Saudis complain that the Ministry of Labor is doing very little to protect their rights as more and more maids run away. Employers say that they end up losing considerable amounts of money when the housemaids flee and are never compensated. It seems that as soon as the workload increases and maids are asked to rub some extra elbow grease into their work then the women bail out and abort ship.
In his search for a suitable trustworthy, polite and hardworking maid, Rashed Abdul Rahman went abroad with his family. He thought he could find a maid and also have a short break away from home. While on holiday they met a potential housemaid who they employed for a month to see how she worked. Rashed and his family found the woman well behaved, hard working and displaying good manners but as soon as the family brought the woman to Riyadh she vanished into thin air.
Rashed was left heartbroken and upset. “She tricked us, she had it all planned,” he said.
A short time later the family received a call from the police saying that the maid had been caught in Jeddah working as a housemaid in an illegal network involving other runaway Asian housemaids. It turned out that the ringleader was a man for whom the maid had worked in a brief stint a while ago.
In a similar case, Muna Sulaiman, a working woman and mother of a three-year-old, complained of her housemaid who ran away a week after her brother’s maid disappeared leaving her in a desperate situation of having to juggle household chores with work and children.
One Saudi mother, called Um Abdullah, said one day she found her four-month-old daughter’s head swollen and noticed the baby was having problems breathing.
Um Abdullah and her husband became worried. They took the baby to hospital to be told by a doctor that the girl had been hit in the head. Um Abdullah’s husband was furious and rushed home to reprimand the maid only to find that she was missing.
Many maids enter the Kingdom legally and then run away to work in lucrative illegal networks to be paid up to SR1,200 a month.
Fawzieh Al-Bakr, a lecturer at King Saud University in Riyadh, said the phenomenon of housemaids running away is dangerous to the community, government and security resources. Fawzieh believes there is a sinister network behind the phenomenon of maids running away. She says that three years ago she herself was put in a difficult situation when her maid ran away.
The Ministry of Social Affairs and police deal with the responsibility of runaway maids at the Center for Maids Affairs. The center employs receptionists to follow up complaints and a number of female workers supervise detained maids and ensure the women are given food and shelter.
Most runaway maids are deported after all fines and payments that maids are responsible for are paid in full. However, many employers complain that they are never compensated for the financial losses they incur in bringing maids into the Kingdom.
According to the ministry most maids that the center deals with are women who have fled within their first three months in the Kingdom. Many of the maids complain that the living standards are poor in their sponsors’ home; some claim they have been mistreated and others say they are not paid regularly.
With maids running away and many Saudis having to face the brunt of financial losses it is perhaps time the government did something to maintain the rights of Saudi employers who are abused by their dishonest maids.
"Center for Maids Affairs". Sounds French.
If the pay was good, the living conditions tolerable, why would they run away? Maybe the "Master" left a couple of details out of the job description???
My imaginary maids keep running away too. Could it be that I spend too much time on FR?
just hilarious. oh how terrible they have to clean or care for their own house and children. lol omg
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
This reminds me of the old days, when some of my richer friends of an older generation used to complain endlessly about the "servant problem," something I'm happy to say I have never experienced.
But unlike the Saudis, American bluebloods generally refrained from beating their maids, raping them, locking them in closets, or neglecting to pay them.
Some of the more genteel parts of America used resemble P.G. Woodhouse; someone might lure your chef or butler away with an offer of higher pay. In Saudi Arabia, it's more like what you read about in the history of Islam, when Arabs had Christian slaves whose were expected to obey every whim of their masters or suffer the consequences.
FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel/Russian Jewry ping list.
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
Hard to work in a hijab.
I hate when the maid drinks all my Hennigans and complains about the red spot on the cashmere sweater I gave her.
I love cashmere...
Why, oh why, did God put most of the oil in the Middle-East?
Those folks have more money than sense.
I was going to send this to my sister, but her hands are to full to come unglued by a item like this
"Once them slaves learn to read an' all, they gets all uppity and think they deserve to be paid, and don't have to put out for the massa an' stuff."
LOL!
Thanks for the ping
Center for Maids Affairs Ping.
I don't understand how, but I am on the best damn ping lists on Free Republic.
Thanks to y'all, I I can initiate a meaningful conversation in any setting, with anyone.
Maids are having affairs?
Are these old maids, maidens, or dairy maids?
Please respond soon as this is a very exciting and much-anticipated ping!
(Flyer, you're right about us being on the best darn ping lists on FR!)
Why don't the Saudis hire Palestinians and give them part of the sandbox to live in? Everybody would be happy, right?
Amen, right on, and tell it!
I should try to feel sorry for others when they are going through troubles. But somehow, a bunch of oil-rich Fraudis complaining about maid trouble just tickles the bleep out of me!
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