Cleansing the process of recruiting migrant women domestic workers to ‎promote human dignity and rights

The second assessment conference on ‘the role of agencies recruiting migrant ‎domestic workers’ held last Friday at Monroe Hotel in Beirut was called on by ‎the labor minister Sajaan Azzi. Participants included, the owners of ‎recruitment offices from all the Lebanese regions, representatives of embassies ‎that have nationals working and residing in Lebanon, in addition to ‎representatives from the public security apparatus, the internal security forces, ‎and civil society, human rights and international organizations concerned. In ‎his opening address, Azzi “advised his would-be successor to keep to the new ‎protocol of regular consultation and dialogue” which he started between the ‎ministry and the said agencies. Azzi pointed out that the conference “seeks to ‎maintain the profession, boost cooperation, protect dignity and human rights ‎of all parties involved, particularly inside the households that boast their own ‎privacy,” as he put it. The labor minister spelled out that some agencies ‎working in the domain are in fact not operational or non-existent and ‎accomplish only 10 contracts per year. Other offices, he added, tend to lease ‎their working license or the signature, and even do transactions outside their ‎authorized responsibilities, besides agencies that bring in men workers, forge ‎papers and change the generic term or title of the worker. Warning that this ‎will not be acceptable from now on, Azzi revealed that as a result of the ‎screening and investigation, some 122 offices were shut down and 22 others ‎suspended. (An Nahar, October 1, 2016)‎