In most international locations, working as a housekeeper or nanny is a comparatively protected occupation.
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 ladies 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 ladies, have died in Saudi Arabia previously 5 years. No less than 55 died simply final yr, twice as many because the earlier yr.
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 ladies 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 business with fly-by-night gamers. East African ladies are recruited by the hundreds and educated by well-established firms, then despatched to Saudi Arabia by way of a course of regulated and accepted 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 yr attempting to determine it out.
Employees are being bought a dream that, typically, turns into a nightmare.
We interviewed greater than 90 staff and their households, and punctiliously analyzed employment contracts at any time when we might.
We discovered that ladies from Kenya and Uganda are lured to Saudi Arabia with guarantees of higher wages and alternatives.
Recruitment businesses and their brokers give deceptive details about wages and make staff signal contracts they’ll’t learn.
Some businesses market ladies as merchandise. Company web sites supply staff “on the market” to Saudi purchasers. We noticed one which had a click-to-collect choice.
When ladies 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 advised us that their new bosses shortchanged them or denied them wages, declaring, “I purchased you.”
Highly effective individuals are creating wealth off these ladies.
Utilizing the employment contracts and, at any time when we might discover them, autopsies, police experiences or authorized paperwork, we started wanting into firms that profited off these ladies.
Company data and securities filings led us to highly effective folks, together with officers who could possibly be defending these staff.
Excessive-ranking officers in Kenya and Uganda and their households, we discovered, personal stakes in staffing businesses.
Fabian Kyule Muli, for instance, is a member of Kenya’s Parliament and likewise owns an company that sends ladies to Saudi Arabia. He’s the vice chairman of a parliamentary labor committee, a job that may go legal guidelines defending staff. The committee has at instances been a champion for sending extra folks to Saudi Arabia, and has denied that staff are damage there.
In Saudi Arabia, members of the royal household, together with descendants of King Faisal, have been main traders in businesses that provide home staff. Senior Saudi officers additionally maintain high-ranking positions with staffing businesses.
Regardless of years of mounting proof of abuse, leaders together with President William Ruto of Kenya have vowed to ship extra staff overseas. One in all his high advisers owned a staffing firm. So does Sedrack Nzaire, whom Ugandan media identifies because the brother of that nation’s longtime president, Yoweri Museveni.
Girls who’re abused have little recourse.
In interviews, ladies advised 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 embrace solely minimal employee safeguards.
The Saudi authorities says its legislation enforcement and courts shield staff towards abuse and assist them search recourse. However ladies advised us they had been unable to entry such assets, and police despatched them again to abusive employers or government-funded amenities that felt like prisons.
Many abused staff should pay for their very own flight dwelling, regardless of laws saying that they need to not have to take action. Our reporting discovered that determined staff typically returned dwelling broke, disabled and suicidal.
And within the circumstances of great harm or dying, households must navigate an online of purple tape, apathy and impunity. In Uganda, Isiko Moses Waiswa advised us about studying that his spouse had died in Saudi Arabia.
Her employer gave him a alternative: her physique or her $2,800 in wages.
“I advised him that whether or not you ship me the cash otherwise you don’t ship me the cash, me, I need the physique of my spouse,” Mr. Waiswa advised us.
