Expats min salary is fixed to hire Filipino maids

The Philippine Embassy in Kuwait has confirmed that expatriate employers who want to hire Filipino domestic helpers should be earning a minimum monthly salary of KD 2,500.

According to an embassy source, who wished to remain anonymous, Kuwaiti employers are not included in the new salary requirement clause as they already earn a minimum salary of more than KD 1,500, and also receive government subsidies for food and allowances for their children.

The requirement will be included in the new tri-party contract which will be signed between employers and workers.

The Philippines sends the largest number of household workers to Kuwait after India. As of June 2020, there were nearly 680,000 domestic workers in Kuwait – 325,000 from India and nearly 150,000 from the Philippines. Local and their international partner agencies are allowed to charge employers up to KD 990 for hiring new domestic helpers.

“This new policy protects the welfare of Filipino domestic helpers. The cost of living in Kuwait is very high and expats are also paying rent and a lot more. Even if their salary is around KD 1,500, it will not be enough to cover everything including paying their domestic helpers,” the source explained.

“The embassy want to implement this rule to avoid non-payment of salaries, and the Demafelis case was a huge lesson for us,” the source added. The embassy official was referring to a case in 2018 of housemaid Joanna Demafelis, whose body was found inside a freezer in a Maidan Hawally apartment. The convicted murderers of the maid were two expats, a Lebanese man and a Syrian woman, who fled to their respective countries after the brutal killing.

The Kuwaiti government has already started the processing of visas for new domestic helpers, but only returning housemaids are currently being allowed to arrive.