Price Manipulators Will Be Prosecuted

The Ministry of Commerce advised local labour offices against rigging the costs of hiring foreign employees and requested that they follow the Ministry's recruitment pricing guidelines.

If any office is caught manipulating the pricing, the owners will be sent to the Public Prosecution Officer, and the office would be administratively closed, according to these sources. According to the sources, a team comprised of representatives from the ministry and the Public Authority for Manpower has been constituted for this purpose.

This comes as the operators of recruiting offices for domestic employees reaffirmed their loyalty to the Ministry of Commerce's decision, which set the value of fixed contracts for these foreign workers at 890 dinars.

According to owners of domestic labour recruiting businesses who spoke to the newspaper, the auspicious Eid Al-Fitr holiday will contribute to a reduction in new contracts, especially given the broad demand for domestic workers of all nationalities and sorts.

They claim that the value of the fixed contracts, set by the Ministry of Commerce at 890 dinars, is low and insufficient to generate a profit margin, especially since the value of one contract from the Philippines, which is the most favoured, ranges between 2,400 and 3,100 dollars (equivalent to 734 and 950 dinars) — ticket price excluded.

The office owners ascribed the fluctuation in contract prices to labour recruiting organizations in the Philippines and India, where the price varies depending on the nature of the worker's experience and other benefits. They claimed that setting the new contract value at 1250 dinars, including travel tickets and services, would be appropriate for all offices, particularly those working with Filipino labour agencies, whereas the previous prices, which ranged between 750 and 900 dinars, could be adequate for Indian or African contracts.

According to figures released by the Ministry of Interior and the Public Authority for Manpower, 26,000 new contracts for domestic employees are signed each year, compared to 4,500 residence permits that are revoked. The Corona epidemic had a severe influence on the local labour market, as yearly contracts plummeted to 30% of total new contracts, notably in the years 2020 and 2021, when 14.1 thousand employees entered the nation, compared to 52 thousand in 2018 and 2019.

When comparing the number of domestic employees before and after the pandemic, the number in 2019 was about 731 thousand, this steadily declined until the end of last year to around 591,000, a 140,000 worker decrease rate. Female employment accounts for the majority of domestic labour contracts in the country, accounting for 50.1 percent of overall employment in line with Article 20.

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