Ethiopia ... It’s too late!

July 25, 2013 |Arab News

By Abdullah Sayel*

Five days after the Saudi Ministry of Labor decided to stop recruiting Ethiopian maids, the Ethiopian government in turn announced that it stopped authorizing recruitment of maids to Saudi Arabia. The Ethiopian government is too late again!

This column argued a year ago about the problems of house labor and how it has reached the level of public horror. Actually, the Ethiopian measure should have occurred when the first murder was committed by an Ethiopian maid. They should have applied strict psychological measurements on their human resources before sending them to other countries. It’s a nation that suffered long enough from dictatorships, civil wars, disputes, poverty and long restlessness.


The Saudi labor officials, on the other hand, should have considered the political and sociological situation of many Ethiopians. A closer look on the situation there, I suggest, calls for helping them by supporting local recruitment in Ethiopia, not anywhere else. Having such negative publicity as labor is way different from having them as immigrants.
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 *The writer is media manager of the King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences.
   Twitter: @abdullahsayel