At least 150 Bangladeshi housemaids escaped from their employers in Saudi Arabia in the last seven months, a Makkah daily reported quoting a source in the Bangladesh Embassy.
The source, who was not identified, said all the housemaids who escaped from their employers were held and deported, according to the Saudi Gazette.
He said the embassy registered three main reasons — exhausting house chores, homesickness and mistreatment by the employers — behind the fleeing of the housemaids, reports United News of Bangladesh.
The source expected that more house helps will come from Bangladesh during the coming months but said the employers who recruited the escapees would not obtain any financial compensation from the recruitment offices.
The source said a total of 52,000 workers from Bangladesh arrived in the Kingdom during 2015 and were mostly working as cleaners, wielders and various other manual jobs.
Khaled Al-Saif, a recruitment expert, believes that Bangladesh is not in a position to cover the great demand for housemaids in the Kingdom.
‘Though Bangladesh had promised to supply the Kingdom’s market with 500,000 house helps when the two countries signed a labor agreement, it has only sent 15,000 housemaids so far of whom 150 had escaped,’ he said.
Saif said most of the workers came through recruitment companies not offices because Bangladesh favors to deal with the companies as they recruit both men and women workers.
He said the cost of recruiting a housemaid from Bangladesh has increased from about SR7,000 to SR15,000.
Source: New Age
