Harassment of Indian housemaids in Qatar has come down significantly after the Indian embassy intervened to legalise the recruitment process.
Despite an earlier ban imposed by the Indian government on recruiting housemaids from the country, a large number of them were still brought to Qatar through illegal channels.
A senior official of the Indian embassy in Qatar said the practice has now been reduced and the living conditions of these maids have improved after the mission intervened to legalise the recruitment process and introduced a hike in their minimum salaries.
"We are now getting hardly one or two complaints from housemaids in a week and most of them are from those recruited
illegally," the official was quoted as saying in the Peninsula newspaper.
The mission had attested employment contracts for about 5,000 Indian housemaids over the past 10 months.
"We are getting 20 to 25 requests for attestation almost every day," he added.