Fast food from our investigation in the abuse of home workers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

In most countries, work as a home or educator is a relatively safe profession.

However, while we traveled throughout Kenya and Uganda, from crowded and poor urban neighborhoods to remote agricultural villages, we heard many differences in the same story of horror: healthy young women are launched for local jobs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, only to be beaten, scars or coffins.

At least 274 Kenyan, almost all women, died in Saudi Arabia in the past five years. At least 55 died in the past year only, twice up to the previous year.

An autopsy only raised more questions. The body of a woman from Uganda showed wide bruises and signs of electric shock, however her death was classified as “natural”. We have found a sudden number of women who fell from surfaces, balconies, or in one case, an opening for air conditioning.

How can this be? This was hardly some mysterious industry with a fly players at night. East African women are recruited by thousands and trained by established companies, then they were sent to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through a process that organizes and approved by Ugandan, Kenyan and Saudi governments.

The preachers of workers have long blamed the old Saudi labor laws. But we asked that something else was playing. We spent nearly a year in an attempt to find out.

Workers are sold as a dream, often becomes a nightmare.

We met more than 90 workers and their families, and we carefully analyzed employment contracts whenever we could.

We found that women from Kenya and Uganda are lured in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with promises of better wages and opportunities.

Employment agencies and their brokers provide misleading information about wages and make workers sign contracts that they cannot read.

Some agencies shopping women as products. The agency’s workers’ sites are for sale to Saudi clients. We have seen an option that had a click option to collect it.

When women reach the Kingdom, employers often confiscate their passports and property. The Kenyan housekeeper works in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for $ 250 or so a month. But many women told us that their new presidents reduced them or deprived them of wages, declaring, “I bought you.”

Strong people earn money from these women.

Using employment contracts, and whenever we can find them, dissect bodies, police reports or legal documents, we began to look at the companies that benefited from these women.

We have led the companies’ records and securities files to powerful people, including officials who can protect these workers.

We have found high -ranking officials in Kenya, Uganda and their families, and have their shares in employment agencies.

Fabian Kiol Molly, for example, is a member of the Kenya Parliament, and also has an agency that sends women to Saudi Arabia. He is the vice -chairman of the Parliamentary Labor Committee, a job that can issue laws that protect workers. The committee was sometimes the heroine to send more people to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and it denied that the workers had been injured there.

In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, members of the royal family, including the descendants of King Faisal, were major investors in agencies that provide home workers. Senior Saudi officials hold high -level positions with employment agencies.

Despite years of increasing evidence of ill -treatment, leaders, including President William Roto, from Kenya, pledged to send more workers abroad. One of his senior advisers owns the employment company. The same applies to Sedrack Nzaire, which the Ugandan media has defined as the president’s long brother, Yoweri Museveni.

Women who are exposed to abuse do not have little asylum.

In the interviews, women told us with tears that their superiors in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia denied food, raped them, or assaulted them with bleaching or stabbed them.

However, East African governments have ignored invitations from activists and human rights groups to negotiate better work agreements with Saudi Arabia. Employment treaties It only includes the minimum workers guarantees.

The Saudi government says that the application of law and courts protects workers from ill -treatment and help them seek asylum. But the women told us that they were unable to reach such resources, and the police returned them to the abusive employers or facilities funded by the government, which felt like prisons.

Many aggressive workers must pay the price of their trips to the homeland, although the regulations that they should not do. Our reports found that desperate workers often returned home, obstructing and suicide.

In cases of serious injury or death, families must navigate a network of red strip, indifference and impunity. In Uganda, Isiko Musa told us about learning that his wife had died in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Her employer gave him a choice: her body or $ 2,800 in wages.

Mr. Weissa told us: “I told him that whether you are sending money to me or you do not send me money, I, I want the body of my wife.”