Why Maids Keep Dying in Saudi Arabia

East African leaders and Saudi royals are among those profiting off a lucrative, deadly trade in domestic workers.

By Abdi Latif Dahir and Justin Scheck. From The New York Times. This article shows that exploitation of workers can result from the actions of government officials. Excerpts: 

"Lured by company recruiters and encouraged by Kenya’s government, the women have reason for optimism. Spend two years in Saudi Arabia as a housekeeper or nanny, the pitch goes, and you can earn enough to build a house, educate your children and save for the future."

"Hollow-cheeked women return, often ground down by unpaid wages, beatings, starvation and sexual assault. Some are broke. Others are in coffins.

At least 274 Kenyan workers, mostly women, have died in Saudi Arabia in the past five years — an extraordinary figure for a young work force doing jobs that, in most countries, are considered extremely safe. At least 55 Kenyan workers died last year, twice as many as the previous year."

"Autopsy reports are vague and contradictory. They describe women with evidence of trauma, including burns and electric shocks, all labeled natural deaths."

"One of them, Margaret Mutheu Mueni, said that her Saudi boss had seized her passport, declared that he had “bought” her and frequently withheld food. When she called the staffing agency for help, she said, a company representative told her, “You can swim across the Red Sea and get yourself back to Kenya.”"

"Members of the Saudi royal family are major investors in agencies that place domestic workers. Politicians and their relatives in Uganda and Kenya own staffing agencies, too."

"Mr. Muli’s labor committee (Fabian Kyule Muli, vice chairman of the labor committee in Kenya’s National Assembly), for example, has become a prominent voice encouraging workers to go overseas."

"Even after other countries negotiated deals with Saudi Arabia that guaranteed worker protections, East African countries missed opportunities to do the same"

"worker-protection efforts had been hindered by “interference by politicians who use proxies to operate the agencies.”"

"A director of a Saudi government human rights board serves as vice chairman of a major staffing agency. So does a former interior minister, an Investment Ministry official and several government advisers."

"these agencies paint a rosy picture of work in Saudi Arabia. But when things go wrong, families say, the workers are often left to fend for themselves."

"Using employment contracts, medical files and autopsies, reporters linked deaths and injuries to staffing agencies and the people who run them. What became clear was that powerful people profit off the system as it exists."

"African governments stood to benefit from remittances. Mr. Muli’s committee called on Kenya in 2019 to “embark on a rigorous campaign to market Saudi Arabia as an important destination country for foreign employment.”

“The current notion that foreign workers in Saudi Arabia go through suffering” needed “to be corrected,” the committee added."

"“Under no circumstances does a worker bear any financial responsibility for repatriation,” wrote Mr. Goldstein, the Saudi ministry spokesman.

But workers and worker-rights advocates say that laborers are often forced to pay. Those without money can be detained."