JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabian authorities have observed significant rise in housemaids’ smuggling from Bahrain into eastern province of the kingdom, local media reported on Wednesday.

Local recruitment officials revealed statistics that at least 30 violations recorded on a daily basis involving the smuggling of maids into the Eastern Province from Bahrain and other Gulf nations.

The officials claimed that some recruitment companies were involved in housemaid smuggling by taking advantage of strict legal routes of recruiting foreign house servant for Saudi citizens.

Saad Baddah, head of the Council of Saudi Chambers’ national recruitment and investors committee, said some domestic workers enter with visit visas from other Gulf countries. He added that the labourers then renewed there visas every three months. He said that the workers cannot use labor visas from other Gulf nations, which were handled by the Saudi Ministry of Labor to enter the Kingdom, Arab News reported.

The violators of country’s law were warned to face penalties which might cause cancellation of recruitment offices’ licenses, Taiseer Al-Mufrij, spokesman of the ministry said.

Moreover, head of a local recruitment office, Ibrahim Al-Manshi, said that many requests were submitted to bring the wives of drivers, mainly Indians, especially after recruitment from India resumed.

He said that bringing the wife of a driver or worker on a visit visa to live here as a dependent costs less rather than to recruit her as a domestic worker with a new labor visa since Indian recruitment requirements turned more difficult and complicated.