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Muscat: The Indian Embassy in Muscat, under instructions from the Indian government, has raised the bar for minimum wages for housemaids coming to work in the Sultanate.
“From the existing minimum monthly salary of 50 Omani riyals [about Dh478] for Indian housemaids, the limit has been raised to 75 riyals,” Indian ambassador to Oman, Anil Wadhwa, said at a press conference held at the embassy premises on Saturday evening.
With the new decision from yesterday, India follows a host of other countries like Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Philippines, Indonesia, Tanzania and Bangladesh, in raising the salary of its domestic workers.
“The new wages have been necessitated by the inflation in the economy and the rising cost of living worldwide. Moreover, the wages of Indian household workers have remained static for more than 15 years,” Wadhwa said.
Taking into account the excellent relations between Oman and India, Wadhwa said it has been decided to scrap a regulation that requires bank guarantee of $25,000 (about Dh91,847) from individual employers.
Mandatory
The skilled Indian workers get passports with 10-year validity but in case of domestic workers, the Indian ambassador revealed, the validity would be only one year. “This is to monitor these workers and allow them to report any irregularities in their employment,” Wadhwa said.
He also said it has been made mandatory now for domestic workers to get their labour contracts attested by the embassy before leaving India.
Wadhwa said it was now a must for a sponsor to provide a pre-paid cell phone to housemaids on their arrival in Oman.
“The sponsor should also allow the housemaid to report to the embassy here within four weeks of her arrival in Oman,” he added.
The embassy will provide free legal counsel and sometimes even pay for medical assistance and airfare to housemaids ill-treated or abused.
The embassy has prepared flyers in five major Indian languages — Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Oriya — about the rights of domestic workers.
Facilities on offer
- Prior attestation of labour agreement by the embassy is a must to allow household workers to leave India.
- Orientation programme for household workers in India.
- In collaboration with the Ministry of Manpower of the Sultanate of Oman, flyers in six languages (four regional Indian languages, English and Hindi) have been prepared which are being placed at the immigration counters and airplanes. They contain a series of ‘dos and don’ts’ for household workers.
- It has also been made contractually binding for the sponsor to provide a pre-paid mobile phone to the household worker on arrival.
- The sponsor should also allow the household worker to report to the embassy within four weeks of his/her arrival in Oman.
- For any household worker who has been ill-treated, the embassy provides free legal advice and free legal assistance on a case to case basis.
- The embassy also pays for medical treatment and airfare in deserving cases. -
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