Monday, June 22, 2015
Shortage of maids pushes households to hire part-time maids
Demand for part-time maids has increased due to the shortage of domestic help and the month of Ramadan.
Recruitment agencies, manpower supply and cleaning companies said UAE households cope with mounting house chores during Ramadan by hiring part-time maids due to the shortage of such staff in the UAE.
Traditional labour-sending countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Ethiopia and Nepal have stopped sending maids to the UAE due to conflicting recruitment rules. A top Philippine labour official said talks between the UAE and the Philippines have resumed to solve the Filipino maid shortage issue within the year.
Rudi Holean, client relations manager at MaidCV.com, said the demand for part-time maids has increased by about 25 per cent since the start of Ramadan.
“There is a noted increase for part-time maids during Ramadan. In the long run, it’s going to be expensive for them to keep hiring part-time maids but that’s the solution that they have for the meantime,” Holean told Gulf News.
Household workload typically increases during Ramadan for the daily iftar preparations and cleaning. Having a maid helps ease this burden.
Holean said Filipino maids remain the most in demand followed by Indians and Sri Lankans, who have a decent demand. Interest in hiring maids from African countries is picking up, although there are very few takers.
Shoukat Ali, who owns Al Sanabil Manpower Supply, said since Filipino and Indonesian maids cannot be hired from their home countries, he has tried hiring maids from Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. Other companies have maids from Cameroon, Ghana, Zimbabwe and Eritrea. But out of, say, 20 maids recruited from Africa and flown to Dubai per month, only one or two get selected by employers.
The demand for maids is also fuelled by the “slow months of summer” when families usually send their maids home for their holiday.
“Lots of maids are sent away for their holiday during summer. Families hire temporary replacements to cope with the summer months and during Ramadan. Inquiries have tripled in the past two weeks,” Steven Barker, CEO of Home Safe, a company that provides maids and cleaning services, told Gulf News.