Sri Lanka’s Maid in Saudi Problem
Human rights activists hold placards during a protest against a Saudi death by stoning sentence of a migrant worker accused of adultery, opposite the U.N. office in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Dec. 3, 2015.European Pressphoto Agency
Sri Lanka says it has a maid in Saudi Arabia problem it is trying to fix.
In the past two years, the South Asian nation has had to pay to bring more than 2,000 Sri Lankan maids home from Saudi Arabia after they fled their jobs.
Sri Lanka brings home overseas workers every year from all over the globe, but the number that it has to help return from the Middle Eastern kingdom is highest.
Recent high-profile incidents in which returning maids have claimed abuse and even torture by their employers as well as cases in the kingdom where Sri Lankan house help has been convicted of breaking local laws and severely punished, has focused the island nation’s attention on the safety of its overseas workers.
“There has been a steady increase of housemaids returning,” said Sri Lanka Foreign Employees Bureau spokesman Upul Deshapriya. “Many continue to face difficult working conditions despite our efforts to train them and root out unscrupulous job agents,” that don’t provide proper training or vetting of employers, he said.
Around 1.2 million Sri Lankans work abroad and about 300,000 of them are in Saudi Arabia, mostly as maids. Close to 35% fewer maids went to the kingdom last year, as an economic slowdown weighed on demand for their services and concern about the treatment of maids hurt supply. Around 25,000 Sri Lankan maids went to Saudi Arabia last year compared with around 39,000 the previous year, according to the Sri Lanka Foreign Employees Bureau.
