Kuwait: For abused domestic workers, nowhere to turn
October 7, 2010 07:12 am
Domestic workers in Kuwait who try to escape abusive employers face criminal charges for “absconding” and are unable to change jobs without their employer’s permission, Human Rights Watch says.
Migrant domestic workers have minimal protection against employers who withhold salaries, force employees to work long hours with no days off, deprive them of adequate food, or abuse them physically or sexually, Human Rights Watch said in a report released in Kuwait City on Wednesday.
The 97-page report, “Walls at Every Turn: Exploitation of Migrant Domestic Workers Through Kuwait’s Sponsorship System,” describes how workers become trapped in exploitative or abusive employment then face criminal penalties for leaving a job without the employer’s permission.
Government authorities arrest workers reported as “absconding” and in most cases deport them from Kuwait – even if they have been abused and seek redress.
“Employers hold all the cards in Kuwait,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
“If abused or exploited workers try to escape or complain, the law makes it easy for employers to charge them with ‘absconding’ and get them deported. The government has left workers to depend on employers’ good will – or to suffer when good will is absent.”
Data compiled by Human Rights Watch shows that in 2009, domestic workers from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Ethiopia filed over 10,000 complaints about their treatment with their embassies in Kuwait.
Kuwait, which has the highest ratio of domestic workers to citizens in the Middle East, announced on September 26, 2010, that it would abolish the sponsorship system (kafala) in February 2011, and replace the employer-based system with a government-administered recruitment authority.
While this would be an important reform, the government gave no details on what legal protections would be added for migrant workers in the country, or whether the reforms would cover domestic workers.
The country’s more than 660,000 migrant domestic workers constitute nearly a third of the work force in this small Gulf country of only 1.3 million citizens. But domestic workers are excluded from the labor laws that protect other workers.
Kuwaiti lawmakers reinforced this exclusion as recently as February 2010, when they passed a new labor law for the private sector that failed to cover domestic work.
“It shouldn’t be against the law to run away from an abusive employer,” said one activist who regularly counsels domestic workers in Kuwait, and who asked to remain anonymous. “Sometimes these girls, they say, ‘Do you know what happened to me in that house? They hit me, spat on me...how can there be a case against me?’”
The Kuwaiti government’s reform of the current sponsorship system, Human Rights Watch said, should include immediate steps to remove “absconding” as a legal violation, and to permit workers to change jobs without an employer’s consent.
The government should also cease arresting and deporting workers for leaving jobs where employers violated their rights, and should instead provide domestic workers with emergency shelter and expedited complaint mechanisms, The Jakarta Post reports.