But now the 40-year-old woman says her sponsor stopped paying her four months ago and then sold her to a labor placement agency in Riyadh for SR13,000 (about $3,460).
After promising to pay her the back salary, the agency sent her to work for another Saudi family without paying her the promised sum. And she claims her new employer, a Saudi woman, is treating her poorly, such as not paying her a salary, keeping her locked up so she won’t flee and denying her medical attention.
“I’m sick and this woman won’t give me even a Panadol, and she has not given me salary,” Beevi told Arab News.
“There are three other maids here, too: an Indonesian, a Sri Lankan, and one from Morocco. They have not been paid their salaries either.”
If the allegations are true then a number of Saudi labor laws have been violated by Beevi’s first sponsor, the labor placement agent and the new employer.
Besides the obvious illegal practice of not paying a salary, a sponsor cannot sell off an employee to a third party agent. That third party agent is likewise prohibited by law from then hiring out a worker under somebody else’s sponsorship.
The new employer has also broken the law by taking in a worker who is not under her sponsorship. Beevi says she is still under the sponsorship of her first sponsor.
Beevi has complained to the Federation of Kerala Associations in Saudi Arabia (FOKASA), which has filed a petition on her behalf to the Indian Embassy in Riyadh.
“The Indian Embassy tried to contact the woman in whose home Laila Beevi has been kept locked up,” said R. Murleedharan, president of FOKASA.
“But neither the woman nor her son answered their phones, so we have requested the embassy ask the police to intervene, which they did by sending a fax to the police.”
FOKASA has requested the embassy in the petition to put pressure on Beevi’s sponsor to give her the accumulated balance salary of eights months, the end-of-service benefit for 18 years of labor and the final exit visa and plane ticket.
