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 girls set off for home jobs in Saudi Arabia, solely to return crushed, scarred or in coffins.
At the very least 274 Kenyans, almost all of them girls, have died in Saudi Arabia prior to now 5 years. At the very least 55 died simply final 12 months, twice as many because the earlier 12 months.
Autopsies solely raised extra questions. The physique of a girl from Uganda confirmed intensive bruising and indicators of electrocution, but her loss of life was labeled “pure.” We discovered a shocking 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 business with fly-by-night gamers. East African girls are recruited by the hundreds and educated by well-established firms, then despatched to Saudi Arabia via a course of regulated and authorised by the Ugandan, Kenyan and Saudi governments.
Employee advocates have lengthy blamed archaic Saudi labor legal guidelines. However we puzzled if one thing else was at play. We spent almost a 12 months attempting to determine it out.
Staff are being bought a dream that, typically, turns into a nightmare.
We interviewed greater than 90 staff and their households, and thoroughly analyzed employment contracts each time 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 staff signal contracts they’ll’t learn.
Some companies market girls as merchandise. Company web sites provide staff “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 instructed us that their new bosses shortchanged them or denied them wages, declaring, “I purchased you.”
Highly effective individuals are earning money off these girls.
Utilizing the employment contracts and, each time we might discover them, autopsies, police studies or authorized paperwork, we started wanting into firms that profited off these girls.
Company information and securities filings led us to highly effective individuals, together with officers who might be defending these staff.
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 in addition owns an company that sends girls to Saudi Arabia. He’s the vice chairman of a parliamentary labor committee, a job by which he can go legal guidelines defending staff. The committee has at occasions been a champion for sending extra individuals to Saudi Arabia, and has denied that staff are harm there.
In Saudi Arabia, members of the royal household, together with descendants of King Faisal, have been main traders in companies that provide home staff. 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 staff overseas. Certainly one of 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, girls instructed us via 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 legislation enforcement and courts defend staff in opposition to abuse and assist them search recourse. However girls instructed us they had been unable to entry such sources, 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 residence, regardless of laws saying that they need to not have to take action. Our reporting discovered that determined staff typically returned residence broke, disabled and suicidal.
And within the circumstances of great harm or loss of life, households should navigate an internet of purple tape, apathy and impunity. In Uganda, Isiko Moses Waiswa instructed 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 instructed 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 instructed us.
