Why we really don't need maids

THE E-MAIL I received this week from a Filipino living in Riyadh was all too-depressingly familiar: A female relative of a friend of his is working as a maid for a Saudi family in the capital and is being sexually molested by her employer.

The employer, or "kafeel" as they are called in Arabic, threatened the maid with termination if she didn't acquiesce to his lascivious advances, according to the short telephone conversations the maid was able to have with her relative.
When a female relative of the maid tried to visit her at her employer's house, the Saudi man screamed at her, enraged that she had been able to locate his house. He then lashed out and repeatedly hit her on face, causing her to fall down. The relative, naturally scared, turned and ran away, screaming for help from anyone in the neighborhood.

While it is obviously true that not all Saudi employers are like this, an alarmingly high number of them do treat their foreign employees as modern-day slaves, mere pawns that can be slapped around and treated badly with impunity.

This boils down to the feeling of superiority that many Saudis have. A feeling of "We're better than everyone else." Why some Saudis feel this way is a mystery. Perhaps it is because of the fact that Makkah and Madinah are located here in the Kingdom; that Islam started in what is today Saudi Arabia, or perhaps it is the vast oil wealth we have been blessed (or cursed) with?

No matter what it is, nothing gives anyone the right to treat another human being as an animal or slave. And since the Kingdom is trying to develop into an advanced and enlightened nation, isn't it about time that we Saudis gave up on the army of foreign nannies, maids, cooks and drivers that the keep the whole nation running smoothly?

If European and American families have learned to survive quite well without maids living in their homes, why can't Saudis do the same too? Is it really that hard to take care of one's own family and house? Lazy Saudi housewives, instead of sleeping until two in the afternoon, after staying up all night, should wake up early with their kids, get them ready for school and have lunch ready for them when they come home in the afternoon. Instead, most of those tasks are all too often left to the maids to do.

On my way to work on Wednesday I stopped at a fast-food place to buy myself lunch and it was jampacked with young Saudis having lunch, when they should have been at home eating a meal with their parents. The point is that Saudi society has become much too dependent on foreign workers that it treats and pays badly.

The Saudi government should announce a phase-out of all housemaids in the next two years. Maids are the most vulnerable sector of foreign workers as I have often said in this column. The Philippines should stop exporting maids, and focus instead on sending highly-qualified Pinoys abroad, who will be much more respected and not as easily abused by unscrupulous employers as maids are.

In the meantime, I ask that the Philippine Embassy rescue this abused maid as soon as possible and file charges against the employer. Saudis cannot allow these abuses to continue, and the embassy cannot afford to be weak in the face of such injustice. The National Human Rights Society should also be championing the rights of the much-abused maids, instead of meekly acting like the declawed tiger that it currently is.

This group, that is supposed to be defending the human rights of all in the Kingdom, should set up a taskforce to deal specifically with abused maids and the problems they face. There are, unfortunately, certainly enough abuse cases to warrant this.

Comments to rasheed@arabnews.com