MANAMA, 30 October 2005 — More than 30 Filipino maids have fled employers in Bahrain during the current Ramadan season, complaining of being overworked, according to an official at the Philippine Embassy in Manama.
“More than 30 Philippine maids have fled their employers and taken refuge at the embassy since the beginning of Ramadan” on Oct. 4, Venus Baravo, lawyer for the mission’s labor affairs department, told AFP.
“Since the start of Ramadan, we are receiving four (runaway) maids a day ... In normal times, we would receive one to two cases a day. The cases increase in Ramadan, as maids complain of long working hours,” she said.
Baravo said the main reason which prompts the domestic helpers to run away is lack of sleep during Ramadan, a month in which Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. They break their fast with an “iftar” meal, then usually eat again just before the new fasting day begins at dawn.
Baravo said Ramadan’s pace, during which maids have to cook the two meals and still be up early to prepare children for school, was exhausting, leaving the domestic helpers little time to sleep or rest.
The embassy always tries to resolve the problem by talking to both employers and maids, but it refuses to pay “compensation” to employers who demand such payments to allow a maid to change jobs or return home, she added.
Between 20 and 30 percent of some 30,000 Filipinos living in Bahrain work as domestic helpers in homes, according to embassy figures.
There are also thousands of Indians working as maids in the Gulf country, but the second secretary at the Indian Embassy in Manama, R. Raghunathan, told AFP there had been no increase in the number of maids running away during Ramadan.
“We received about four cases since the beginning of Ramadan,” which is the average figure in the corresponding period anytime of year, he said.
Hundreds of thousands of Asians work as domestic helpers in oil-rich Gulf Arab states, often for paltry salaries. Many run away from their employers, citing maltreatment or non-payment of wages.
