Chilling narrations from migrants in Saudi Arabia
Former domestic workers in Saudi Arabia have narrated harrowing ordeals they had to endure while serving their masters.
While narrating their stories to the Commission on Administrative Justice (CAJ) popularly known as the Ombudsman, the workers claimed that during their stay in Saudi Arabia they were abused and tortured, forcing them to quit working before their contracts came to an end.
In a report released yesterday, the Ombudsman disclosed that the major forms of abuses experienced by Kenyan migrant domestic workers in Saudi Arabia include passport confiscation, physical and sexual abuse, sleep deprivation, labour exploitation, movement restriction, imprisonment prior to deportation, racism, religious intolerance and psychological abuse.
“To ascertain the veracity of the above allegations contained in media reports, CAJ conducted a systemic investigation suo moto to interrogate why Kenyans working as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia were predisposed to abuse regardless of the measures that were adopted after the 2014 ban and the consequent Bilateral Agreement,” the report.
Commission also noted that time allocated for the pre-departure training is not sufficient as the training is allocated 189 hours, which is conducted even on weekends against the recommended 200 hours while the content is equally not detailed enough to empower.
Labour Cabinet Secretary Simon Chelugui is on record saying that 93 people died while working in Middle East between 2019 and 2021 due to car-diac arrest, Covid-19, cancer, childbirth, respiratory complication, meningitis, tuberculosis, suicide and accidents.
He also indicated that 1,908 distress calls were reported between 2019 and 2021, with 883 being reported in 2019-20 and 1,025 in 2020-21. In the report released yesterday, the Ombudsman also shared details of the death of two ladies; Beatrice Waruguru and Stella Nafula, who succumbed to mistreatment while working there.
According to the report, Waruguru’s body arrived at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport from Saudi Arabia where she worked as a housekeeper, al-most a year after she was reported dead.
Waruguru’s family says she left for Saudi Arabia in February 2021, and died under suspicious circumstances in December that year.
“The family maintains she was tortured,” the report.
Reports also shows Nafula left in August last year to work as a house help on a two-year contract but died on February 10, 2022.
Medical report
“A medical report from Saketa Hospital in Saudi Arabia indicates that Nafula succumbed to cardiopulmonary arrest, but her family said she died after her employer refused to take her to hospital, and alleges that she had suffered mistreatment under previous employers,” the report
Four other ladies have narrated how they ran away from their work places after the working conditions became unbearable.
Rebbecca Chesang and Catherine Murochaia regretted that they were not only physically tortured but were also sexually assaulted. Chesang told the commission that on arrival in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, she was placed at her first employer, a family that welcomed her well but after four months her employer started overworking her by forcing her to work in the homes of her children and physically assaulting her.
She explained that her request to have her allowed to go back home was futile as her employer instead sold her to work for another family, where the abuse was worse since, as at some point, the second employer inserted objects in her private parts.
Security team
Murochia, who was recruited in Saudi Arabia in the years 2014-2016, alleged that she signed her contract at the airport and that the Agent did not al-low her to read the content.
After landing at the airport in Riyadh, she said in the company of others, they were received by a security team who took possession of the travel doc-uments but was lucky that she did not encounter many problems while working.
