Maid woes....

Another one bites the dust!

Oh dear... This one has got gobby and says she wants to work somewhere else next year. Sorry love, if that's how you feel you can go now!

She has the easiest life ever for a maid but apparently it's not enough!

Read my lips.... 

 NO MORE MAIDS!

Slavery alive and well in UAE

Agents advise paying maids less than minimum wage - The National

I think what these agents are advising, and definitely their advise is heeded, amounts to slavery. It doesn't have to be this way. We pay our maid more than double the minimum suggested. She gets a day off. When she has finished her work, she can go out and meet her friends. This is just normal and humane. I heard someone say the other day that maids don't "run away" , we are not talking about children here - they may "choose to leave" because the conditions they are in, or their treatment, is unacceptable.

There are those here (it's fair to say, generally, Arab) that consider our approach as being bad for "the market" in maids - pushing up the salaries and making maids "run away" when they realise they can earn more elsewhere. It can be argued that even the minimum salaries offered are significantly more than they could earn in their own countries, but for me their treatment is more important than the salary itself. Personally I would feel guilty at paying only the minimum, but that is from my western expat cultural perspective. For most western expats here, we have maids not because we can't possibly do without one (we managed perfectly well at home without!), but simply because it is an affordable convenience.

So - if you have a maid, do the right thing!

Maids

Well gluttons for punishment, our new maid arrives from Sri Lanka on Friday. The saga of our last maid continued this week when I was asked to attend an arbitration meeting with Dubai Immigration after our last maid's embassy appealed my decision to report her as absconded. Laws regarding maids and sponsorship of staff in general leave you in a somewhat precarious position if the letter of the law is not abided by.

I agreed that our previous maid could be taken by her embassy to try and find her a new job, rather than being flown home. I agreed to this on the basis that the embassy would provide me with a letter confirming that they had taken full responsibility for her, within 48 hours. Whilst that would have given me some reassurance, it would not release me from my responsibility towards her as her sponsor. Therefore if she ran away, did something bad, died - I was still responsible for her or her actions. So, as after a week went by and still I had no letter from the embassy, I reported her as "absconded". I had never seen any ID proving that the guy she went with was in fact from the embassy. He could have been just her friend, or maybe a pimp - who knows. That's why I had to do what I did, to protect myself.

Having been reported as absconded, she would be deported when found and banned from working in the UAE for 1 year. It also absolved me of all responsibility for her. "Khalas". Finished. Done. Or so I thought...

Now this was done, we set about preparing the paperwork for our new maid. She was recommended to us by a family she has worked for for 2 years. She is a really nice girl from Sri Lanka who seems very conscientious and also has a bit of savvy about her. She will arrive early on Friday morning, having just had one months leave to go home a visit her family. We are pretty confident that things will work out fine with her and we will not have the same hassles again. Caz will be able to go back to her regular working hours, knowing that Milo.....remember :

..... will now have someone to look after him while we are at work / on leave etc.

Last Friday night at 10.30pm our doorbell rang, and I was presented with a letter "inviting" me to attend a meeting with Dubai Immigration, which of course I duly attended. Now, fair play to our ex-maid's embassy, they were doing their job well and managed to secure this meeting rather than her being deported straight away. The immigration officers listened to the story from both sides (her side including a whole string of lies - I especially loved the bit where Caz tried to kill her (she felt like it, but didn't actually try!)) Anyway, the upshot was that they seemed to fall for the sob story and allowed her one month to find another job - which I believe the embassy has found for her, so she is a very lucky lady and the embassy has played a blinder. Honestly, I'm not sure why they bothered asking me to go. I had no influence over the decision really, I was no longer her sponsor, so I held no sway at all. But, it is now finally over and when she has her new sponsor, at last I can get back my 2000 Dhs deposit held by immigration that all sponsors must pay.

So now, onto the next...... [desperately looking for wood to touch]

More on the maid situation

I know for people living back in the UK the idea of us having a maid, sounds a bit like "Upstairs Downstairs" but here it is so common to have one, no one bats an eyelid if you say you have one. To be fair, even at home we had someone come in to do cleaning and ironing and Caroline has used an au-pair before, so the concept is not so alien. We are in the process of looking for another maid after the nightmare of the last one. The main issue for us is having Milo looked after while we are at work. But it has been really great to have the house cleaned everyday, the wardrobe always full of ironed clothes, the garden watered (a necessity in this heat if you don't want everything to die pretty quickly) and the cars clean (yes, she cleaned the cars too).

Caroline has changed her hours for now so that Milo is not left too long, and it is ok, but she can't do that for ever and we both agree it would be so much easier if we had another maid. It will also mean we don't have to pay for kennels when we have trips home. So the search continues...

When you sponsor a maid here, you become her official employer and you have legal responsibilities towards her. As my visa is held in Dubai, then she falls under my sponsorship in Dubai. There are tons of forms to be typed (paid for to be in Arabic), photographs to be submitted, a medical (c.300 Dhs) to be conducted and a 2000 Dhs deposit to be paid. There is also an annual sponsorship fee of 5000 Dhs. The maid then gets a monthly salary, which in the enlightened country that we live in, is purely dependent on what country they come from. It ranges from something like 600 Dhs (c.£100) for an Indonesian to 2500 Dhs (c.£420) for a Filipino. So all in all, it is not a cheap exercise.

Milo is becoming a very expensive addition......

House Maid

I haven't covered this subject before, but 8 weeks ago we got a house maid. This was because Caz was going back to work and now we have Milo - so we needed someone to look after him. Cleaning/cooking etc was a bonus. Anyway, it's a very long story - but the long and short of it is below:-

Got a maid

She was crap

Needed to get rid of maid, but she refused to go

Police came

Man from her Embassy came

Maid leaves with man from Embassy

Maid's visa cancelled

Looking for new maid... (are we mad?)