RIYADH, 14 September 2007 — The Indian government has decided to set up a 24-hour women’s helpline in all of its embassies in the Gulf. The service is exclusively for women working at the lower rungs and is being started to deal with a growing number of young women, who are lured by dubious recruitment agencies that promise hefty salaries in the Gulf.
According to the Ministry of Indian Overseas Affairs (MOIA), the government is currently dealing with 67 such cases. The majority of these cases involve sexual exploitation and ill treatment. The women include nurses, private tutors and hairdressers.
The number given by the ministry must be the tip of the iceberg. However, it is good that there is an acknowledgement of the problem at the highest echelons of the government machinery, which is often accused of doing little for citizens that are stuck in a legal quagmire in foreign countries — especially in the Gulf.
Not long ago, three Indian women restaurant workers in Bahrain talked about how they were forced into prostitution by the restaurant manager and a woman supervisor. The trio made a stinging revelation that they were kept confined in an apartment in Manama between work shifts. All of their salary was deducted to meet accommodation charges, compelling them to survive on tips.
In the end, these women were able to contact the Indian Embassy in Manama and were subsequently rescued. With over two million Asian maids working in the Gulf without proper legal cover, there are several such heartrending cases of maids being exploited. Almost all of them come from poor background and are illiterate or semi-literate. Some of them face all kinds of maltreatment, ranging from nonpayment of salary and poor working conditions to being forced to work more than eight hours for which they seldom get compensated.
In some cases, the women — who are confined to their homes — are compelled to work 22 hours a day, seven days a week, some without food or pay. The worst cases pertain to sexual abuse and physical violence. It is little wonder that some maids seek revenge and end up killing their employers.
One study estimates that in the UAE and Kuwait, there is one domestic helper for every two citizens, while in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain there is one domestic helper for each family on average. The six Gulf Cooperation Council Countries (GCC) have a population of about 33 million people, and around 11 million guest workers and their families.
The majority of domestic workers come from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines and Pakistan.
It is important to understand that the law, in most cases concerning guest workers, is in favor of local residents because of the language barrier. Very few maids are familiar with Arabic and cannot express and defend themselves properly. This is in spite of the existence of laws that are meant to protect maids.
Kuwait, for example, has a special law to protect maids but has been unable to stop sponsors from abusing maids. Likewise, in Bahrain the labor law also covers maids but maltreatment continues.
Moreover, the duties of many maids go unspecified. For example, maids are recruited for household chores and then often are asked to take care of children even though they may not be trained babysitters. The case in point is that of Rizana Nafeek, a 19-year-old Sri Lankan maid, who is accused of strangling a four-month-old Saudi boy. The matter is before the courts. What is disconcerting is the ongoing debate over the role of the country’s embassy, which some people feel has not done enough.
Instead of the embassy, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) came forward and deposited an initial sum of $14,000 to begin Nafeek’s appeal process. It is therefore little wonder that there is a widespread impression that embassies or consulates of Asian countries do precious little in protecting the rights of their own citizens.
Many people find it convenient to recruit Asian maids simply because they only have to pay them around $100 per month. Asian maids also incur minimum food and shelter costs. But given the exploitation, the embassies of these countries must wake up and do more than what they are pretending to do. Talk of letting “the law take its own course” cannot be an excuse to remain silent bystanders.
These embassies need to influence host countries and ensure their citizens are given fair trials and justice.
