Speculated ban on maids in Saudi
may have political implications

Last week, the Arab press reported several shocking news items that Saudi Arabia is mulling banning Sri Lankan maids. As reason for this sudden development Saudi authorities have said that Sri Lanka maids were a threat to their own culture.
Although this was reported in the Arab press, the local authorities down here have assured that they have not heard anything to officially confirm such a move by the Saudi Arabian authorities.
Undoubtedly, if Sri Lankan maids were banned from working in Saudi Arabia, it will have a negative impact on the Sri Lankan economy being one of the key foreign exchange earners.
In fact, according to Sri Lanka’s Central Bank’s statistics, worker remittances have exceeded more than US$ 3 billion in the first eleven months of 2009, a 14.2% increase compared with the corresponding period the pervious year.
Even though Saudi authorities have not issued an official statement regarding this, it is now widely speculated by analysts, diplomats and even economists that this possible development could be another warning for the foreign policy Sri Lanka has been following for the last four years.
Even though President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government has maintained fair relationships with Middle Eastern nations, it is a well-known fact that Western countries maintain a better relationship with the oil rich gulf, especially with countries such as Saudi Arabia. In fact, these relationships are mutual in nature unlike our relations with them. The Western world depends on oil rich Middle Eastern countries for oil and they in return expect security and recognition from the powerful Western nations.
Putting all this into context, some analysts speculate that the sudden move to ban Sri Lankan maids would have stemmed from this scenario. It is clear that Sri Lanka hasn’t been the most welcome friend for the Western countries for the last four years—instead opted for new friends that represent the new world order, predicted but yet to come in real time.
During the war with the LTTE, the role the Western countries played was described as sinister by many and this may have prompted the Rajapaksa government to look for new allies that rendered support in Sri Lanka’s effort to conclude the war with the Tigers. Though the search for new friends was at the cost of the loss of old or rather conventional friends, the government moved forward and wiped out the LTTE.
As a result, the bargaining power the Western world had over Sri Lanka was weakened. According to many, now they are using economic tools such as GSP+ to regain that bargaining power they had over Sri Lanka.
This may be why some local analysts on foreign policy and relations tend to interpret the possible move to ban Sri Lankan maids by the Saudi authorities as similar to the loss of GSP+, a ploy staged by the Western powers currently not in very good terms with Sri Lanka.
“President Rajapaksa’s Russian visit is indicative of the path the country would take in terms of foreign policy. We have tuned our backs on conventional allies and so, it’s no surprise if the West employs various tools to pressurise Sri Lanka,” an expert on foreign relations said.
It is no doubt that with or without bans Sri Lanka should reduce the number of people employed in the Middle Eastern countries as unskilled labour. This has created numerous social issues to which we are yet to find answers. The social cost of sending our mothers and daughters to toil in these desert lands may be more than the economic gain we anticipate.
But reducing the number of unskilled labour sent to the Middle Eastern region has to be done gradually without destabilising the economy that is poised to grow in a post-war scenario. A barrier to the foreign remittances at this juncture could indeed be fatal to the Sri Lankan economy.