Kenyan Domestic Workers Doomed Voyage to the Gulf — Global Issues

• by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi, kenya)
• Friday, January 14, 2022
• Inter Press Service

And this concern is all too acquainted for 28-year-old Wanjiku Njoki. The younger lady’s whose seek for greener pastures within the Gulf landed her within the palms of a bodily, mentally, and verbally abusive employer.

In 2018, she travelled to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

That 12 months, Wanjiku was one in every of an estimated 57,000 to 100,000 Kenyans who journey to Gulf international locations, together with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain yearly, for unskilled and semi-skilled work, based on the Ministry of Labour, Social Safety and Providers.

“I heard tales of struggling and loss of life, particularly from Saudi Arabia, however the recruiting agent instructed us they solely work with employers who don’t have any historical past of abuse,” she tells IPS.

“Additionally they lied in regards to the wage. I acquired $180 per thirty days and never the $700 promised. My employer would pay me, make me signal a doc confirming the fee after which steal the cash again. Once I instructed them in regards to the lacking cash, the person and his spouse would slap me and refuse to feed me.”

Her life as a shagala, which she says is Arabic for home helper or servant, grew to become a year-long nightmare. Along with her passport and cell phone confiscated by her employer, slicing her off from the remainder of the world, she noticed no manner out.

“I labored from 5 am to midnight each day. I spoke solely when spoken to and was very depressed. With time, I befriended the gardener who allowed me to secretly use his cell phone,” she says.

Finally, she related with Kenyans in Saudi Arabia by way of social media, who instructed her find out how to escape, get arrested and deported. In 2020, Wanjiku returned to her village in Kagongo, Kiambu County, empty-handed however alive.

Saudi Arabia has a contemporary slavery prevalence rank index of 138 out of 167 international locations as per the World Slavery Index. The index https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/assets/downloads/ additionally estimates that 61,000 folks dwell in fashionable slavery and that 46 out of each 100 persons are susceptible to fashionable slavery.

Confronted by unemployment charges which can be among the many highest on the earth as per the UN’s Worldwide Labour Group (ILO), a whole bunch of susceptible ladies like Wanjiku proceed to take, as a rule, a doomed voyage to the Gulf.

The parliamentary committee on labour and social welfare point out the variety of Kenyans working in Saudi Arabia has risen from 55,000 in 2019 to 97,000. The variety of deaths and misery incidences has additionally elevated.

In 2019, three deaths have been reported to the Kenya embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, rising to 48 deaths in 2020 and, as of September 2021, 41 deaths.

So far in 2021, three deaths have been reported in Qatar, one within the United Arab Emirates, two in Kuwait, 9 in Oman and two in Bahrain.

“There are at the least 100 backstreet companies linking staff to the Center East. Solely 29 companies are authorities authorised and licensed. Many companies are very grasping and are least involved with the protection and safety of their recruits,” says Suzanne Karanja, a Nairobi-based recruitment agent.

“There may be cash to be made as a result of a potential employer can pay me $1,800 to $2,000 per head to facilitate journey to their nation. Most brokers don’t intervene when hassle comes. Their work is finished as soon as they obtain the fee.”

Karanja says the slave and grasp state of affairs presents itself amongst feminine home staff and employers within the Center East primarily as a result of employers incur all the value of processing journey paperwork, coaching, and journey.

She tells IPS {that a} potential employer pays at the least $2500, break up between a recruitment agent within the nation of origin and the vacation spot nation.

If the recruited home employee leaves earlier than the contract is accomplished, employers insist on a refund.

She says the federal government should step up and crack down on backstreet brokers for violating phrases of operation, together with not paying a government-stipulated bond of $15,000 and a registration price of $5,000 yearly.

The $15,000, she says, is meant for use to rescue distressed ladies who, to this point, are rescued by Kenyans of goodwill when their misery tales flow into on social media.

Moreover, Karanja speaks of Kenyans illegally detained within the Center East for difficult poor working situations and others stranded and dwelling on the streets hoping to be arrested and deported.

“All of the deaths are amongst younger ladies, and their employers say they died of cardiac arrest. How is that this potential? Younger, energetic ladies who went by way of and handed obligatory medical checks dying inside one to 4 years of being within the Center East?” Karanja questions.

Wanjiku says that the Kenya Embassy in Saudi Arabia must be scrapped as a result of it’s infamous for turning a blind eye.

“Households of ladies who died within the Center East have video and textual content message proof of their family members crying for assist, however the embassy and brokers did nothing to rescue them. The ladies document themselves on cell phones and ship these movies to their households and social media however assist solely comes by way of unusual Kenyans.”

Parliament’s Standing Committee on Labour and Social Welfare travelled to the Gulf area in April 2021 to search out options to the disaster.

Karanja stresses that the state of affairs is dire, prompting the Overseas Affairs Principal Secretary Macharia Kamau to put in writing to the Ministry of Labour in July 2021, strongly recommending a short lived ban on recruitment and export of home staff to Saudi Arabia till safety measures are in place.

So far, no concrete actions have come from the advice or others made by politicians after the Gulf go to. In the meantime, blinded by poverty and desperation, susceptible ladies proceed to make their solution to the Gulf.

This story is a part of a collection of options from throughout the globe on human trafficking. The Airways Aviation Group helps IPS protection.

The World Sustainability Community ( GSN )  is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Improvement Aim quantity 8 with a particular emphasis on Aim 8.7, which ‘takes speedy and efficient measures to eradicate compelled labour, finish fashionable slavery and human trafficking and safe the prohibition and elimination of the worst types of baby labour, together with recruitment and use of kid troopers, and by 2025 finish baby labour in all its types’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Non secular Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Non secular leaders of varied faiths gathered to work collectively “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being towards the intense types of the globalization of indifference, similar to exploitation, compelled labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedAuthentic supply: Inter Press Service