Jeddah, Dec 17: Expatriate female teachers in the Kingdom have been at the receiving end of the intensive crackdown on illegal workers in private schools.
Several schools have received the new orders which call for existing teachers to transfer their iqamas to their employers.
“We have received a circular from the Ministry of Education that it is compulsory to transfer our iqama to the school's sponsorship,” said Sofia K., head of an International school. Negotiations with the Education Ministry had been underway to mitigate this rule for some months now and teachers were hoping that there would be some flexibility in this regard. “But we are now back to square one,” she said.
Schools have started to convince their teachers to transfer their sponsorships otherwise they would have to go through the lengthy process of hiring new teachers to fill the positions. Sarah Rehman has been teaching for nearly five years and is under her father's sponsorship. She had received a one-year work permit in line with the earlier decision of the Labor Ministry. But she is now being asked by the school's administration to transfer her sponsorship to comply with the new labor laws.
“What worries us is that if we resign from our jobs, will we be able to return to our original sponsors as dependents? We want to be sure about this before we transfer our iqamas,” she said.
Rehman said that the Education Ministry should have had clear guidelines on the iqama transfer issue. “Their fluctuating decisions have caused a lot of problems for teachers in private schools,” she said.
Amena, a teacher at the Little Flower School, said one of the reasons why the teachers are indecisive about transferring their iqamas is because of the low salary structure and absence of any benefits.
Teachers in private schools earn flat salaries ranging between SR2500 to SR4000 with no additional perks.
Suleiman Ahmed has two sons studying in one of the private schools in Jeddah. He said, “If the school has insufficient teachers, they will struggle to hire new staff which will need time to understand the curriculum, which will in turn affect the students.”
Experts say if the school agrees to hire teachers on higher remunerations it will upset the school budget on the one hand and lead to increased tuition fees on the other. This will reflect in the higher fees that parents will have to pay.
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