http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MTIyNTg3MjMz
Headline News Maid abuse rising in Kuwait: HRW Published Date: October 07, 2010 By Ahmad Saeid and Agencies KUWAIT: Abuse of domestic workers in Kuwait is rising, and maids in the state face prosecution when they try to escape, Human Rights Watch said yesterday. The New York-based rights group said migrant domestic workers have minimal protection from employers who withhold salaries, force them to work long hours with no days off, deprive them of adequate food or abuse them physically or sexually. The number of abuses has been rising," Priyanka Motaparthy, HRW research fellow in Middle East and North Africa, told a press conference announcing a report, which details specific cases. "In 2009, domestic workers from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines and Ethiopia filed over 10,000 complaints of abuse with their embassies," she said. The HRW data does not include Indian maids, who represent almost half of the 660,000 domestic workers in Kuwait. Domestic workers, almost entirely Asian, form one-third of the 1.81 million foreign employees in Kuwait. 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. "Employers hold all the cards in Kuwait," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW. The report was based on interviews of dozens of runaway maids at either their embassies or a small government-run shelter. Domestic workers in Kuwait are not covered by any law to limit working hours or a rest day or even basic rights, the report said. "They are forced to work for unlimited hours, 10, 12 or 18 hours with no breaks, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year," Motaparthy said. Whitson said that while there has been some improvements in Kuwait, there needs to be an overhaul of the linchpin of the problem for all migrant workers - the sponsorship system. "The sponsorship system creates a sense of ownership for employers of their worker and effectively gives them ownership rights," Whitson said. "They decide when an employee can change jobs, they decide whether or not an employee can leave the country and they restrict the ability of the employee to leave their job if they are not happy," she said. Whitson explained that HRW monitors and reports human rights abuses in over 95 countries in the world and that they are not here to condemn Kuwaiti society as an abusive one but rather to find out what is wrong with the system and fix it. "The first step towards solving any problem is to recognize its existence," she explained. Luckily there are many people in Kuwait, so many officials and MPs, who understand that this problem exists. We are here to help Kuwait find a solution to this problem. When asked about whether the organization's location in the US, and given the United States' human rights violations, inhibits their right to advocate for human rights in other countries, Whitson said that HRW does not select which country to focus on and ignore others. "With respect to the United States, I don't think there is any organization in the world that documented the US' abuse of human rights in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram like we did," she said. It's very easy to try and ignore abuse in one's country, or even in another country, by looking at something that's worse," she said. "What every society is responsible for at minimum is fixing what's wrong at home. We should all be aware of the abuses that are happening outside our country but our first and foremost responsibility is to fix what's wrong at home," Whitson said. Motaparthy said Kuwait suffers from three main problems when it comes to domestic laborers. "The first is the lack of a labor law for domestic laborers in Kuwait. Domestic workers are one third of the workforce here and yet they don't enjoy the same protections that other workers enjoy. This means that there is no law that sets limits for working hours per day, overtime pay or the number of days that should be worked each year. Also, there is no law that provides yearly holidays or sets requirements for at least one day off per week for domestic workers," she pointed out. "The recently passed labor law specifically excluded domestic workers, and we'd really like to see that changed," she added. Secondly," continued Motaparthy, "there is no law in Kuwait that is called the sponsorship law. It is essentially a collection of immigration laws and regulations that govern domestic workers' legal residence here in Kuwait." According to Motaparthy, the two main problems with the sponsorship system in Kuwait are the fact that domestic workers can't change their jobs without their employer's consent. "Under Kuwaiti law, absconding from your place of work and leaving your job is considered running away and is a crime," she continued. "You can face up to six months in prison or be fined a few hundred dinars for doing so. In our opinion, it shouldn't be a crime to quit your job. Children are the ones who run away, adult workers quit their jobs and this is a right that every worker should have," the HRW official said during the press conference. The third problem is the inability of these workers to seek redress for violations that happened during their time of employment," she said. "If they are not paid their wages, or if they are subjected to any kind of abuse during their employment, it's very difficult for them to seek redress through the current court system," Motaparthy asserted. HRW officials gave three recommendations for the Kuwaiti government. "First of all we would like to see a labor law that better protects domestic workers and offers them the same rights that other workers have," Motaparthy said. "Secondly we believe that the sponsorship system needs to be reformed. The minister of labor announced last week that Kuwait plans to abolish the sponsorship system in February 2011 and we hope that this will be the case. Lastly, there needs to be a way for domestic workers to pursue their complaints through the court system without waiting for months, with no ability to work and send help to their families," Motaparthy concluded. Manik J, a Sri Lankan, said she had worked for more than 18 hours a day for 10 months, but did not receive her salary for most of the period although she worked for two families. She was at the government shelter. Twenty-one domestic workers interviewed by HRW said they had worked 18 hours or more per day on repeated occasions. A 2004 International Labour Organisation study found that maids in Kuwait worked for 101 hours weekly, HRW said. The main abuses include physical and sexual abuse, non-payment or delay in payment of salary, long working hours, no weekly rest day and others, the report said. HRW said it interviewed 22 maids who said their employers or agents had physically abused them, and seven spoke of sexual abuse. An ambassador in Kuwait for a labour-exporting country told HRW that, during 2009, the embassy received 950 rape and sexual harassment claims. Mary P, a Filipina, told HRW her employer beat and insulted her every day, using degrading language. "Sometimes my sir would spit in my face. My employer always called me dog, donkey ... There was no day the employer didn't say these bad words ... I have accepted this because I am the breadwinner of my family," she said. Motaparthy said that based on HRW data, "each week, at least two domestic workers fall from high places," in apparent attempts to commit suicide to escape abuse. Nisha Varia, the senior researcher for the women's rights division of HRW, said that the issue of domestic workers has become one of the leading labor issues globally. Right now the United Nations and the International Labor Organization has decided that this issue is of such importance that they are creating a new international treaty to establish labor standards for domestic workers," she said. According to Varia, this new treaty for domestic workers will be finalized in June 2011 and the draft provision will guarantee that domestic workers will have the same type of rest periods, days off and holidays enjoyed by other workers in the private sector. "Kuwait really has the opportunity to go further and be the country that other countries in the region look to when trying to figure out how to deal with these problems," she said. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
