Saudi Arabia has announced new restrictions on expatriate workers, yesterday naming 12 types of retail stores that can only hire Saudi citizens.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Development issued a directive, as part of the government’s “Saudization project,” barring foreigners from working in shops that sell carpets, electronics, eyeglasses, home and office furniture, kitchen utensils, sweets, textiles and watches, as well as medical equipment and tools stores, auto parts and accessories stores, construction materials stores and car and motorbike dealers. The move follows a similar directive in April 2017 banning expatriates from jobs in shopping malls. In December, the government announced fines for gold and jewelry shops employing non-Saudi workers.
In a similar move, Oman this week issued an immediate six-month freeze on migrant work visas in 10 sectors, including information systems and engineering.
The Gulf nation is attempting to diversify its economy, address unemployment among the Saudi population and decrease the public-sector workforce.
Struggling to support her family, Fauzia Muthoni left her home outside Nairobi, Kenya for Qatar, where a labor broker promised her work as a receptionist.
Instead, she was taken to Saudi Arabia where was forced into domestic work for multiple families and physically abused. Unable to contact her family, she worked for months before finally escaping.
Now back in Kenya, Muthoni works with the KUDHEIHA, a Kenya-based union for domestic workers, educating women on their rights when they seek to migrate for work abroad.
When Fauzia Muthoni arrived in Qatar from Kenya to work as a receptionist and earn money to support her family, the labor agent traveling with her informed Muthoni the job was in Saudi Arabia and escorted her to another plane. She tried calling her family, but realized her sim card did not work in the region. She asked to speak to the contact she was given by the labor recruiter in Kenya who arranged her job, but was told she could not contact him.
Trapped, she was taken to Saudi Arabia where she was forced to work in the homes of multiple households, cleaning, cooking and taking care of children. She was not allowed to contact her family. Back home in her town outside Nairobi, her mother repeatedly visited the labor broker to find out about her daughter, only to be told to come back the next week.
Muthoni worked for three years, toiling up to 18 hours a day, before finally escaping to a police station and ultimately back to Kenya. She was not paid for any of her work.
“They don’t think of you as a human being, they think of you as a slave to them,” she says.
Muthoni’s experience—repeated in various forms hundreds of thousands of times around the world each year—illustrates the difficulties migrant workers face in accessing justice, including assistance in leaving unsafe working conditions and claiming unpaid wages.
Migrant Workers among 25 Million Trapped in Forced Labor
Migrant workers in 2013 accounted for 150 million of the world’s approximately 232 million international migrants. Most travel for work to countries where they are prohibited from forming unions and so unable to exercise their fundamental rights at work. They are among the 25 million people trapped in forced labor. Human trafficking is a big business, with illegal profits of roughly $150 billion a year.
U.S. National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month offers a time to amplify their experiences, which often begin when unscrupulous labor brokers prey on residents of communities in extreme poverty, falsely promising good wages and jobs in more wealthy countries like those in the Middle East, Europe and the United States. Many who take jobs abroad through exploitative labor brokers often do not know their rights—and even when they do, have no access to justice.
That’s why the Solidarity Center, which holds trainings around the world for potential migrant workers to ensure they know their rights, is increasingly working to ensure migrants can exercise those rights.
In Bangladesh, where the Solidarity Center is partnering with the Bangladesh Obivashi Mohila Sramik Association (BOMSA) and the WARBE Development Foundation, nearly a dozen migrant workers were recently returned to Bangladesh after reporting abuse on the job in other countries. All reported unfair recruitment practices, long working hours, unfair compensation, and assault. Three received compensation from recruiting agencies and the Bangladesh government. They also received assistance in the form of food and transportation expenses incurred during their trip back to Bangladesh.
Migrant Worker Rights the Same as All Workers
The United Nations is currently considering a Global Compact on Safe, Regular and Orderly Migration, which would be the first such agreement to cover all dimensions of international migration. Regulating labor brokers and ensuring access to justice are part of the broader spectrum of human and worker rights migrant workers must be guaranteed in the agreement, says Neha Misra, Solidarity Center Migration and Human Trafficking senior specialist.
“We cannot promote the contributions of migrant workers as stakeholders in sustainable development without providing them with options for fair migration,” she says. “This means migrant workers – regardless of status, sector, visa type, nationality or gender —must be treated equal to all other workers. We must develop cross-border mechanisms to allow migrant workers to access justice, remedies and compensation when unscrupulous employers steal their wages, or they are injured on the job, or they are trafficked or face gender-based violence in the workplace. This would go far in mitigating the inherent risks in migration, advancing equality in the workplace and promoting fair and sustainable development.”
Back in Kenya, Muthoni works with the Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotel, Educational Institutions, Hospitals and Allied Workers (KUDHEIHA), educating women on their rights when they seek to migrate for work abroad.
Says Muthoni: “I need to share my experience with people who want to go so they can know” their rights.
Three years ago, Roshan Khatum, 14, was married to Sabir in Nepal’s Dhanusha District. (Although child marriage has been illegal in Nepal since 1963, Nepal has the third highest rate of child marriage in Asia.)
Shortly after they married, Sabir left for Saudi Arabia for work. Unable to find jobs to support their families, some 3.5 million Nepalis are working abroad. Many endure physical and other forms of abuse and some, like Sabir, cannot endure the suffering. Nine months after he left Nepal, Sabir committed suicide. At age 15, Roshan became a widow.
Losing her husband was not easy for Roshan. Her pain increased after she was pushed out of her home by her father-in-law, Leeyakat, who told her, “After losing our son, you are of no worth for us.”
Leeyakat travelled to Kathmandu to claim compensation for the death of his son. But when he learned that according to Nepal law the compensation money would be sent to Sabir’s wife, Roshan, Leeyakat said, “Let the body rot there, I don’t want it.”
Leeyakat returned to Kathmandu nearly nine months later, telling officials his daughter-in-law eloped so Sabir’s body could be returned to him as well as the compensation for his death. More than two months later, the coffin arrived in Nepal. His family performed the last rituals for Sabir according to the Muslim custom. However, Roshan was not informed. She did not even have the chance to see the body of her deceased husband.
During his visit to Kathmandu, Leeyakat had learned how to document his claim for compensation. He had even produced a forged document from the local village authority to pursue his claim. Leeyakat was almost successful in receiving the compensation. Yet just before receiving the payment, Leeyakat was caught.
But because Roshan does not have a marriage certificate, she cannot claim the compensation. Roshan only has a paper that states that she was married to Sabir as per the Muslim custom, which the government of Nepal does not accept as an authentic document. Further, because she was married at age 14, she is not technically a citizen of Nepal and so not eligible for government support.
Everyone in the village has tried to convince Leeyakat to come to a mutual understanding. Leeyakat has closed his ears. He doesn’t want to settle with Roshan, even though she indicated she would share half the compensation with him.
According to the insurance company policy, the claim must be settled within two years, leaving Roshan with only a few weeks before the time expires.
Krishma Sharma is a Solidarity Center program officer in Nepal.
In Mombasa, Kenya, a labor broker offered Frank Wetindi a job in Dubai as a driver. Wetindi went into debt to pay the broker, but was given a job unloading planes in brutal heat, for a salary far less than he was promised.
Living with eight men crammed in one room, Wetinidi says the experience overall “was not good.” When he became sick and went to the hospital, the employer deducted the cost from his salary, leaving him with nothing in his account. He says he was denied “freedom of workshop, freedom of movement and freedom of communication.”
Labor agencies “lie to [migrant workers about] the job they are going to do, the good salaries and all that. On arrival, you find something else,” he says.
Today, International Migrants Day, is a time to recognize that millions of migrant workers are trapped in conditions of forced labor and human trafficking. Some 150 million are migrant workers are among the 244 million migrants around the world, and like Wetindi, many have been lied to about the wages and working conditions they were promised by labor brokers.
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