Sri Lankan maid Nawaz Dawood Sifana, 25, had run away from her Saudi sponsor’s home seven months ago.
After her employer complained, police arrested and detained her in Malaz jail for four months until three months ago, when she was transferred to a deportation camp in Riyadh.
Sifana’s father is a Sri Lankan citizen, while her mother is from the south Indian state of Kerala. According to her passport, she was born in the village of Maduranketiya around 140 km from Colombo.
“We received an outpass from the Sri Lankan Embassy because the maid holds a Sri Lankan passport,” Indian social worker Tennala Mohideen Kutty told Arab News on Saturday. He also pointed out that according to her passport, she had come to the Kingdom when she was just 20.
Kutty said the Kerala Muslim Cultural Center — Kannur District Committee, had come forward to offer an air ticket for the maid to go to Colombo. “We will be able to repatriate her as soon as we find her an airline reservation,” Kutty said, adding that her mother from Kerala had informed him that she would come to receive the maid in the Sri Lankan capital.
An official from the Sri Lankan Embassy said the outpass was issued by the mission and added it was a mystery as to how she passed through Sri Lankan immigration when the minimum age for maids was fixed at 21.
Thanking the Indian organization for helping Sifana, the official said the maid was also entitled to a ticket to Colombo since she is registered with the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment.
Unscrupulous recruitment agents sending underage maids to Saudi Arabia is a common trend.
Rizana Nafeek, a maid currently facing a death sentence for killing an infant, was sent to the Kingdom when she was 17 in 2005.
On Friday, there were demonstrations in Colombo asking the Sri Lankan government to bring to justice the recruitment agent who sent her.
Parliamentarian Ranjan Ramanayake asked why the criminal investigations department that probed the agency had not released its report or recommended action against the agency.
Ramanayake said that as far as he knew, the agent’s name is Muajabdeen and he had obtained a passport declaring a false age for Nafeek.
While government and nongovernment organizations were trying their best to save the life of the young woman, the man who sent her to Saudi Arabia was still at large, the politician said.
Chairman of SLBFE Kingsley Ranawaka said that he had asked the CID several times why they were not releasing their findings.
Ranawaka said the immigration authorities should also be partly blamed for issuing a passport without properly scrutinizing the Nafeek’s documents.
