Kenyan migrants treated like 'trash' in Saudi
- Posted on Wednesday 6 July 2011 - 12:22Joyce J. Wangui, AfricaNews reporter in Nairobi, Kenya Photo: A campaign image showing a maid being fed from a dog bowlA working day of 18 to 22 hours, constant threat of sexual abuse from employers and beatings, sometimes with the use of hot irons, by the wives of employers characterize an ordinary life of a domestic worker from Kenya in Saudi Arabia. A returnee has described the treatment to fellow migrants as "trash."
As the quest for working abroad heightens for many skilled and semi-skilled Kenyans, only a handful understand the implications of working in countries where labour laws are ignored. The increasing media reports of brutality of foreign laborers in Saudi Arabia have done little to deter determined Kenyans from seeking greener pastures.
But is it really greener pastures or modern day slavery?
A recent report released by the labour ministry shows that the lack of employment opportunities and unattractive wage levels in Kenya are among the factors that have led to high levels of migration abroad. An estimated 3 000 female domestic workers are working in Saudi Arabia with at least 90% of them drawn from Mombasa, a Kenyan city whose residents share the same Islamic beliefs as Saudi Arabia, a factor that woos many into immigrating in Saudi.
Their heart-rending stories of torture brings to the fore the irony of a society whose beliefs advocate for equal human rights, but the same society does the opposite. As many put it, the jobs open a new frontier of Islamic slavery.
Saudi Arabia, a Kingdom situated in the Middle East has been in the spotlight for unlawful human trafficking that is characterized by the mistreatment of laborers, including women and children. The Kingdom has been named as a Tier 3 country by the United States Department of State in its 2005 Trafficking in Persons Report required by the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. Tier 3 refers to those countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards of Trafficking of Victims Protection Acts.
Kenyan immigrant workers are among many who have fallen victim of shrewd laws or lack of them in a Kingdom that has not yet ratified the International Human Rights Bills that are meant to protect foreign workers.
Illusion
When Salma Noor, 28, left Kenya for Saudi Arabia in 2008, she thought she was entering a safe haven devoid of hardships and with plenty of money. She needed to earn so that she could settle her father’s hospital bills. But immigrating in Saudi Arabia would spell doom for her as she narrated to this reporter.
“Life was hard for my family and I; we could not break even so when my cousin introduced me to a job-recruiting agency in Mombasa, I immediately concurred. The agent asked me to pay $400 [Sh32, 000] for processing my documents and that I was to pay my own flight,” she said.
Her agent had promised her a lucrative job at a duty free shop based at Riyadh International Airport. She even signed a contract but this was not to be. “Upon reaching Saudi, I was received by a middle aged couple who told me that I would work in their house as a domestic worker.”
Her employers confiscated her passport and took her mobile phone. She was made to work for 18 hours on a single day, usually with no food, save for the little she managed to grab while cooking.
She revealed: “I was not even allowed to sleep in the house; I slept in an uncomfortably tiny room which was for their dog before it died. The man of the house often raped me and threatened to kill me if I ever told anyone. His wife beat me on a daily basis, as if the act was part of my job.”
Noor has bruises all over her body, an evident of the torture she encountered at her employers’ house. “I remember one Sunday morning when my employer found me singing and burned me with a hot iron. She confined me in a tightly-locked room where I had to battle for oxygen,” she said amid sobs.
No respect for women
Fatima Hassan, lamented that Saudis have no respect for women, and even less for foreign women workers.
“Female domestic workers are treated like trash. In fact, animals are treated better than humans,” Hassan, 30, stated. She has not been paid for one-and-a-half years. She recently returned to Kenya and said she was lucky to escape.
“I managed to locate the Kenyan embassy in Riyadh and reported my case.” Though the embassy could not intervene for her salary, officials arranged for her flight back home after keeping her for two weeks at the embassy premises. She had never seen the outside world for two years and she was always confined in her employer’s house. “No off-days, no rest, no nothing, these people are animals, in fact worse than animals,” she charged.
“Whenever I asked for my payment, I was thoroughly beaten and threatened with death,” she said, adding that some Saudi families would rather kill you than pay your wages. She noted that the vicious cycle of poverty among many Kenyans forces them to seek employment in Saudi Arabia. The money is ‘too tempting’ and people are still willing to go for this pittance, Saudi Arabia is the most disgusting place to be as a human being capable of thought.
In yet another harrowing incident, Saudi authorities summarily deported Fatima Athman, a domestic worker from Mombasa, a week after she suffered injuries that she said resulted from her employer pushing her off a third-floor balcony in an attempt to kill her. She survived because she fell into a swimming pool.
When contacted, the recruiting agency that had helped her secure her job denied claims of torture saying that most girls were being punished for disobedience. And this suffering by Kenyans at the hands of rogue employers and employment agencies has spurred heated debates among human rights activists, the media and civil societies who blame the government for keeping a blind eye.
“We have a Kenyan Embassy in Riyadh which is toothless,” lamented one Hussein Khalid, a human rights activist. The Government, he said, should be doing much more to protect its workers abroad.
Currently, the Kenyan government is negotiating a bilateral labour agreement with Saudi Arabia in a bid to protect Kenyan workers.
“Experience from other countries shows such agreements can improve the situation for domestic workers by setting a minimum wage or guaranteeing them a day off each week,” stated Khalid.
Amid criticism, the Kenyan government is not watching all these with its arms folded; according to Beatrice Kituyi, a Labor Ministry official, it has set up a labour migration unit to protect the increasing number of Kenyans travelling, working or living abroad.
Kituyi said the unit, established with the support of the International Organization for Migration, will act as a one-stop shop where information will be processed and enquiries on labor migration addressed.
“We issued a directive to all international employers and employment agencies to register with us, detailing the nature of the jobs, skills required and the wages being offered. They also have to be vetted.”
At the same time, she added that job-seekers are encouraged to register with employment bureaus nearest to them.
The development comes at a time when there have been rising cases of unsuspecting job-seekers being conned of huge sums of money by bogus employment agencies advertising non-existence jobs. Currently, the government receives an average of 15 distress calls per day on employment-related disputes from Kenyans abroad.
“This happens because of lack of information about the jobs on offer, but we are doing a crackdown of fake agencies,” Ms Kituyi said.
The unit has also spread information at home to bring about greater awareness about the risks and rights faced by Kenyan women if they choose to migrate and strengthen the services provided to them by its embassies.
A report from the Human Rights Watch dubbed ‘As If I Am Not Human’ documents how domestic workers in Saudi suffer physical & sexual abuse and economic exploitation but face obstacles to redress. Saudi law specifically excludes domestic workers from protections of the labor law.
Abuse
Cases of physical and sexual abuse, non-payment or delayed payment of wages, the withholding of travelling documents, restrictions on their freedom of movement and non-consensual contract alterations are the most prominent mal-practices of Saudi employers.
The severe shortcomings in labor laws and practices often foster abuse and exploitation, as explains a foreign affairs ministry official who declined to be named. He accuses the Saudi government for laxity in implementing bills meant to protect foreign immigrant workers.
“For instance, despite reports of trafficking and abuses of domestic and other unskilled workers and children, there is evidence of only one Saudi Government prosecution of a Saudi employer for a trafficking-related offense.”
Some victims of abuse, due to procedural hurdles, choose to leave the country rather than confront their abusers in court.
Subira Bakari unsuccessfully tried to file complaints with the police, who often ignored her. She recently returned home with her son who was also working in Saudi under deplorable conditions.
“When it dawned on me that taking my abuser to court was an exercise in futility, I feigned sickness and was consequently deported to Kenya.” Subira faked epilepsy and this prompted her employers to contact her agency back home, to arrange for her repatriation.
“This was no easy task as my agent ordered me to pay him Sh.150, 000 ($1875) in order to return home. She painfully adds that the Saudi Government opts to return victims of abuse to their home countries without adequately investigating and prosecuting crimes committed against them.
The Saudi government offers no legal aid to foreign victims and does not otherwise assist them in using the Saudi Criminal Justice System to bring their exploiters to justice. If a victim chooses to file a complaint, he or she is not allowed to work, as Subira explains. Though the government provides food and shelter for female workers who file complaints or run away from their employers, they are shown no mercy either.
Domestic workers suffer most
Human Rights Watch research has shown that migrant domestic workers are some of the least well-protected workers in the world. It is no different in Saudi, where an estimated 1.5 million migrant domestic workers are excluded from labor law protections such as minimum wage, limits to work 15 to 18 hours a day, refusal to pay wages on time and in full, confine their workers in the household and even physically and sexually abuse their employees.
Female domestic workers bear a heavier brunt as they are often trafficked for sexual exploitations. Children are not spared either as they are used for forced begging. Hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers from South-East Asia and East Africa migrate voluntarily to Saudi Arabia though some fall into conditions of involuntary servitude.
“As if I Am Not Human” continues to document numerous cases of physical abuse of domestic workers, including beatings and cases in which employers burned the workers with hot iron and cigarettes, cut the worker with sharp objects, forced a worker to ingest toxic chemicals and cut off their hair.
If nothing is done now, poor immigrants will continue to suffer and even face death as they seek grey and not green pastures abroad.
Reactions
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