Dubai: Rules for hiring Filipino housemaids directly from the Philippines are not being relaxed as yet, a senior Philippine official said.
Labour Attache Delmer Cruz of the Philippines Labour Office in Al Ghusais said there have been no changes in terms of deployment of maids yet since the issue surfaced in June last year.
Hiring new housemaids directly from the Philippines has stopped since June due to conflicting recruitment rules from the UAE and labour-sending countries like the Philippines.
The issue arose when the Ministry of Interior introduced a unified contract for domestic workers leading to the suspension of various embassies’ role in verifying and attesting contracts, including the Philippines.
“We are not deploying new household service workers yet. We’re still on the same status as of last year. I don’t know where the report came from,” Cruz told Gulf News.
“And if this should be the case that the Philippines has resumed sending household service workers (maids), I, as the labour attache, and my counterpart in Abu Dhabi will be the first to know because we’re the implementing agencies.”
In December, Gulf News reported that a resolution on the shortage of Filipino maids in the UAE is on the horizon as both the UAE and the Philippine governments have started the process of negotiations according to Philippine Labour Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz.
Baldoz said they are negotiating on the standardisation of employment contracts to start maid redeployment. But there is no significant update yet, she clarified with Gulf News on Tuesday.
Cruz said Philippine labour offices in the Gulf have been given instructions to simplify the process of sending general or skilled and semi-skilled Filipino workers such as the verification or attestation process. This excludes household service workers.
“One of the instructions of Secretary Baldoz is the incentivisation for good employers and agencies with good track record and abide by the rules of the UAE and the Philippines. We can simplify the process for them,” Cruz said.
Cruz said agencies are considered good if they are compliant with the UAE and Philippine regulations, do not get complaints from the maids being deployed, have low rates of runaways, and have efficient case resolution systems.
Since the maid contract verification was suspended in June resulting in no new maids getting hired from the Philippines, Cruz said the number of distressed workers seeking help from the mission has been slashed by almost 75 per cent, with a range of 25 to 35 wards per month now.
