Saudi only 4th leading destination for domestic workers

Saudi Arabia is only the fourth major destination country for new-hire domestic workers in 2010, according to data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA). Even before the Saudi government implemented its ban to hire Filipino and Indonesian domestic workers last July 2, Hong Kong, China, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates outpaced Saudi Arabia (11,582) in terms of new-hire domestic worker deployment. These three countries got 28,602, 21,554, and 13,184 new-hire domestic workers, respectively, in 2010. Labor officials are trying to arrange talks with Saudi officials to be clarified of the Arab nation’s ban to hire Filipino and Indonesian domestic workers. POEA’s newly released 2010 compendium of overseas employment statistics showed that there were 96,583 new-hire domestic workers deployed last year. The top ten countries of destination for new-hire domestic workers received 93,757 Filipino workers (or 97.07 percent of the global total for the said occupation). The other top destination countries for domestic workers include: Qatar (9,937), Singapore (2,848), Bahrain (1,714), Oman (1,564), Cyprus (1,549), and Italy (1,223). Across all types of occupations, domestic workers — or what the Philippine government formally calls as “household service workers" — were the leading type of new-hire overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) deployed in 2010. Some 94,880 of the new-hire domestic workers deployed in 2010 are female. Charworkers and cleaners (12,133) and professional nurses (12,082) are a far second and third, respectively, of new-hire OFWs in 2010. — Jeremaiah M. Opiniano/OFW Journalism Consortium