In most international locations, working as a housekeeper or nanny is a comparatively secure career.
But as we traveled throughout Kenya and Uganda, from crowded and poor city neighborhoods to far-flung farming villages, we heard many variations on the identical horror story: Younger, wholesome girls set off for home jobs in Saudi Arabia, solely to return crushed, scarred or in coffins.
No less than 274 Kenyans, almost all of them girls, have died in Saudi Arabia previously 5 years. No less than 55 died simply final 12 months, twice as many because the earlier 12 months.
Autopsies solely raised extra questions. The physique of a lady from Uganda confirmed intensive bruising and indicators of electrocution, but her dying was labeled “pure.” We discovered a stunning variety of girls who fell from roofs, balconies or, in a single case, a gap for an air-conditioner.
How might this be? This was hardly some obscure trade with fly-by-night gamers. East African girls are recruited by the hundreds and skilled by well-established firms, then despatched to Saudi Arabia by way of a course of regulated and permitted by the Ugandan, Kenyan and Saudi governments.
Employee advocates have lengthy blamed archaic Saudi labor legal guidelines. However we puzzled it one thing else was at play. We spent almost a 12 months making an attempt to determine it out.
Staff are being offered a dream that, typically, turns into a nightmare.
We interviewed greater than 90 employees and their households, and punctiliously analyzed employment contracts at any time when we might.
We discovered that girls from Kenya and Uganda are lured to Saudi Arabia with guarantees of higher wages and alternatives.
Recruitment companies and their brokers give deceptive details about wages and make employees signal contracts they’ll’t learn.
Some companies market girls as merchandise. Company web sites supply employees “on the market” to Saudi shoppers. We noticed one which had a click-to-collect choice.
When girls arrive within the kingdom, employers typically confiscate their passports and belongings. Kenyan housekeepers in Saudi Arabia work for $250 or so a month. However many ladies informed us that their new bosses shortchanged them or denied them wages, declaring, “I purchased you.”
Highly effective individuals are making a living off these girls.
Utilizing the employment contracts and, at any time when we might discover them, autopsies, police studies or authorized paperwork, we started trying into firms that profited off these girls.
Company data and securities filings led us to highly effective folks, together with officers who could possibly be defending these employees.
Excessive-ranking officers in Kenya and Uganda and their households, we discovered, personal stakes in staffing companies.
Fabian Kyule Muli, for instance, is a member of Kenya’s Parliament and likewise owns an company that sends girls to Saudi Arabia. He’s the vice chairman of a parliamentary labor committee, a job that may cross legal guidelines defending employees. The committee has at instances been a champion for sending extra folks to Saudi Arabia, and has denied that employees are damage there.
In Saudi Arabia, members of the royal household, together with descendants of King Faisal, have been main traders in companies that offer home employees. Senior Saudi officers additionally maintain high-ranking positions with staffing companies.
Regardless of years of mounting proof of abuse, leaders together with President William Ruto of Kenya have vowed to ship extra employees overseas. Considered one of his prime advisers owned a staffing firm. So does Sedrack Nzaire, whom Ugandan media identifies because the brother of that nation’s longtime president, Yoweri Museveni.
Ladies who’re abused have little recourse.
In interviews, girls informed us by way of tears that their bosses in Saudi Arabia denied them meals, raped them, assaulted them with bleach or stabbed them.
But East African governments have ignored calls from activists and human rights teams to barter higher labor agreements with Saudi Arabia. The employment treaties embody solely minimal employee safeguards.
The Saudi authorities says its regulation enforcement and courts defend employees in opposition to abuse and assist them search recourse. However girls informed us they have been unable to entry such assets, and police despatched them again to abusive employers or government-funded amenities that felt like prisons.
Many abused employees should pay for their very own flight residence, regardless of rules saying that they need to not have to take action. Our reporting discovered that determined employees typically returned residence broke, disabled and suicidal.
And within the circumstances of significant damage or dying, households must navigate an internet of purple tape, apathy and impunity. In Uganda, Isiko Moses Waiswa informed us about studying that his spouse had died in Saudi Arabia.
Her employer gave him a selection: her physique or her $2,800 in wages.
“I informed him that whether or not you ship me the cash otherwise you don’t ship me the cash, me, I would like the physique of my spouse,” Mr. Waiswa informed us.
