KUWAIT: With demand for domestic staff peaking in Ramadan when extended families gather at one another's homes for Iftar, the country's domestic staff recruitment agencies call the few weeks beforehand "peak season" due to the tremendous demand for maids and other domestic personnel. According to the agencies, the already-high levels of demand are increased even further by the large number of maids leaving the country after encountering problems with sponsors. Since recruiting a maid from abroad is more time-consuming and expensive than doing so domestically, the recruitment agency staff assert that it is a great deal faster and easier to employ domestic workers in Kuwait.

Each Kuwaiti home has an average of two to three maids, in addition to chauffeurs and cooks, but for Ramadan this number rises as more domestic staff are employed. This higher-than-usual level of demand leads in turn to an increase in the domestic staff recruitment costs. One staff member at a Hawally domestic staff recruitment agency said that while these costs tend to remain the same throughout the rest of the year, in Ramadan people imagine that the demand for maids will rise far further than it actuall
y does, while in fact it remains around the same as normal. The recruitment agency worker also indicated that the cost of employing a maid who has left a previous sponsor does actually increase by KD 20-30, since the maid is already in the country and is ready to begin work.

Another recruitment agency staff member in Hawally said that many families prefer employing maids who have left previous sponsors before Ramadan since they don't want to wait until the holy month comes and to begin having problems with the domestic staff in the middle of the month when these personnel are most required.

The recruitment agency worker also explained that families generally prefer to recruit maids straight from the agency in order to avoid paperwork and bureaucratic delays. According to another recruitment agency employee in Al-Deera, however, the recruitment cost of domestic staff doesn't rise or fall seasonally or according to the month, but in relation to the maid's skills. For example, he said, if the maid can't cook then she won't be in demand, and as a result the cost of employing her is usually lower. A maid who can cook, however, will be in higher demand than others so will demand higher recruitment costs given the increased competition, especially during Ramadan when people want servants who can cook.

Kuwaiti housewife Mona Al-Mahmeed said that during Ramadan people want to be extremely well prepared in terms of domestic staff, especially since Ramadan is a time packed with family visits and gatherings. Mona told the Kuwait Times that maids are usually expensive and in Ramadan they can be hard to get hold of, and when you find one she may not know how to cook, which is the main concern during Ramadan.

Salem Al-Dehani, a Kuwaiti man, said that finding domestic help at any time of year is always problematic and gets worse when Ramadan is approaching because Kuwaiti families tend to overstock their households with maids in case of worst case scenarios. "As a result, finding a good maid is like finding a needle in a haystack, which makes it exhausting and expensive," he said. - Kuwait Times