The Indian embassy effectively put a ban on Qataris hiring maids from India earlier this week by refusing to register them with the embassy. Maids have to be registered with their embassy before being allowed to work in Qatar.
The ban has coincided with several gulf times report of abuse, beatings and non-payment of maids. Only today, yet another domestic worker filed charges against her employer at the Indian embassy today, alleging that her employer's wife had inflicted injuries with a cigarette butt and a hot iron box.
In implementing the ban, the Indian embassy has effectively followed in the steps of Indonesia, which, while not actually banning maids, has done a lot to discourage them from coming here. In fact, as locals enter the Indonesian embassy to register their domestic worker, they will see a poster showing the scars of a tortured maid.
The Phillipines, in the meantime, have imposed a minimum wage on Qatari workers.They hope to export "super-maids", maids with superior househild and culinary skills. Whether they will be successful or not is another matter - the immediate effect seems to be a big increase in new Indonesian workers.
Many embassy staff I have met have a very negative view of Qatar and Qataris. This is perhaps not surprising, as they deal with problem cases and abuse: the maids that have jumped out of three storey buildings or are burned with hot irons. However, not all maids are mistreated.
One Indian maid I interviewed spoke very highly of her elderly Qatari employer, who divorced his (foreign) wife after she abused the maids. When her employer eventually died, his family went to great lengths to find her employment in the family. As none of them had any need for an additional employee, she didn't have much work to do.
Other domestic workers have worked with the same family for twenty or thirty years. I remember a Qatari telling me that his mother would cry when her maid would return to Indonesia on holiday. I've also heard of a Filipinno lady who had a stroke while working in a Qatari household. Not only was her treatment here paid for, she was flown to the Philipinos where all her medical costs were covered by her Qatari sponsors, and told there was always a job here for her if she recovered.
These are perhaps the extremes. Most domestic workers I have met have been unhappy - not because they are beaten or mistreated, but because they are homesick.
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