A press conference was held on 28 January in the office of the President of the Federation Khaled Al-Dakhnan, where the speakers announced that there was a conflict that emerged during the meeting between the Kuwaiti and Philippine Federations, which was held two days ago via the Zoom platform, Al Anba daily reported.
The Philippines side put forth a new condition to the memorandum of understanding discussed between the two countries, which is a demand for recruitment agencies to pay a financial guarantee of $10,000 for the worker in case a dispute arises between the sponsor and the domestic worker, excluding the arrival of domestic workers before the month of Ramadan.
The speakers expressed their absolute rejection of this condition, even if the situation rose to suspend the arrangements for bringing in domestic workers from the Philippines. This is also in light of many false allegations from some workers, stressing that they are committed to the systems, regulations and provisions of Kuwaiti law and will not submit to the Philippines. They noted that the Philippines has an agenda to continue to place blame, and fish for every event to defame Kuwait in front of human rights organizations.
The Kuwaiti Federation of Domestic Labor Recruitment Agencies has warned of the consequences of a possible crisis of the shortage of domestic workers in the labor market during the next stage, indicating the inability to provide domestic labor at reasonable prices to eager clients in light of closing the door to the exporting countries and maintaining deals with only one or two countries.
They highlighted the necessity of opening venues to the largest number of labor-exporting countries without urging offices to deal with a country, similar to the neighboring countries that have become dealing with about 22 labor-exporting countries, especially since this matter greatly helps to lower prices.
They called on the responsible authorities in the state to work on concluding MoUs and sign agreements with a number of African and Asian countries that export domestic workers to create competition that contributes to lowering the prices, including Ethiopia, Uganda, Madagascar, Nepal, and Indonesia in addition to Sri Lanka and India.
The head of the Home Office Federation, Khaled Al-Dakhnan, confirmed that one of the objectives of the Union is to try to reduce the prices of bringing in domestic workers, but there are difficulties in the process, the first of which is the lack of cooperation of the concerned authorities.
For his part, Director General of the Federation of Domestic Workers’ Offices Abdulaziz Al-Ali ruled out the possibility of reducing the domestic labor prices in light of a deficit in dealing with labor-exporting countries.
Al-Ali said that there are strenuous efforts that are nearing its end with Ethiopia, but the issue is currently stalled, indicating that Indonesia is one of the countries that has more domestic workers that are compatible with the Kuwaiti family, but the recruitment has stopped since 2009, and the government must seek to reopen relations with it quickly.
For his part, Union Secretary Ali Shamouh emphasized that the issue of domestic workers is thorny and requires concerted efforts, indicating that government agencies must make efforts to open the field with new countries, indicating that if things continue in this way, the offices will be unable to continue, and prices will continue to be very high in Kuwait.