Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries are divided on hiring Nepali housemaids. According to Kuwait Times, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are preferring Nepali housemaids, while the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Bahrain and Oman want to hire workers from African countries.

A meeting of Interior, Social Affairs and labour ministers of GCC countries held in Kuwait City earlier this week discussed on strict rules on the recruitment of housemaids.

According to Al-Qabas daily, GCC countries are specifying source countries to hire housemaids and revise labour laws incorporating rights of migrant domestic workers.

Gulf countries – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait – had promised to protect informal sector workers by laws according to the International Labour Organisation Convention 189 held last months.

Currently, those countries are revising their law to make it labour friendly to domestic workers.

Kuwait is imposing harsher penalties on the sponsors proven to have violated rights of workers. “We are working to make laws to protect housemaids and other domestic workers,” said Kuwaiti Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour Mohammad Al-Kandari.

Human Rights organisations have been criticising Kuwaiti government for rising suicides of housemaids in recent years.

About 200,000 Nepali women are working in Gulf countries and most of them are undocumented. Their exact number and situation is unknown to the government exposing them to the abuse. According to Department of Foreign Employment, only 32,427 Nepali women had left the country for foreign jobs since 2006-07.

The government has recently opened Gulf countries for Nepali housemaids setting criteria for each country. However, the criterion are too weak to protect housemaids from abuse and exploitation because there is also a provision of safety guarantee from the government of host country.

Other criterion like insurance in host country, security deposit and income status are also not convincing, according to the outsourcers.

Likewise, GCC countries are also specifying working time for migrant working in field. They are prohibiting workers and employers to work in direct sun hit between 11am and 4pm during summer.

The GCC countries also planning to introduce biometric cards to migrant workers and store migrants finger print in labour management system.

Published on: 22 July 2011 | The Himalayan Times