The Ethiopian delegation has arrived in Kuwait to finalize details of the agreement to recruit domestic workers. The meeting is expected to be held with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Public Authority for Manpower and the Federation of Domestic Workers Recruitment Offices today.
“There is an agreement between Kuwait and Ethiopia to sign a labor memorandum of understanding to regulate the recruitment of domestic workers from Addis Ababa,” reports a local Arabic daily quoting PAM sources.
The same sources said, “one of the conditions for activating the agreement is to ‘reopen’ the Ethiopian embassy or one of the offices in the country, to follow up the affairs of domestic workers, whether at the level of consular procedures and/or services other transactions,” so that “Kuwait can deal directly with the embassy of Ethiopian office in Kuwait and not through the intermediary offices.
In this context, the head of the Federation of Domestic Labor Recruitment Offices, Khaled Al-Dakhnan, said the salary of the Ethiopian domestic worker will be set around 90 dinars per month. He added, earlier, it was agreed with the Ethiopian Offices Association on the monthly wage for the new contracts coming to Kuwait, and other items will be discussed in the upcoming meeting with the delegation.
He pointed out the Ethiopian workers before taking up employment will be trained on how to deal with families and Kuwaiti society and master household chores. The Federation of Kuwaiti Offices visited Ethiopia several times in the past period, and it was agreed on items relating to new domestic workers, methods of training them, and approved centers for that.
According to labor market statistics issued at the end of last year, the total number of Ethiopian domestic workers in the country was 10,689; 91% of them women.