5 June 2007
JEDDAH, Egyptian Minister of Manpower and Immigration Aisha Abdul Hadi has denied her intention to allow recruitment of Egyptian maids to work in Saudi Arabia or any other Arab country, saying such jobs rob Egyptian women of “dignity”.
“I always worked on preserving the Egyptian women’s rights and dignity,” she said. “I would never agree to let women travel abroad to work as maids.”
The minister made her comments after media reports said that during her recent trip to the Kingdom she signed a deal to recruit 120,000 Egyptian maids for Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries. Addressing these reports, Hadi made clear that no such agreement had been signed.
A former official involved in Egyptian labor issues in the Gulf, who did not want to be identified by name or title, said recruitment efforts like this would create new problems and new challenges for international representatives and diplomatic delegations.
“The Cairo government has always worked on safeguarding the dignity of the Egyptian workers,” he said. “This effort to prevent Egyptians from working abroad in jobs, such as maids or street cleaning, began a long time ago. It would be weird after these many years to reopen this issue.”
