Housemaids' woes spur Kuwait to review labor law

In November, Egyptian workers - who make up the largest portion of foreign workers here - rioted for two days, clashing with police in disturbances that underscored frustrations with the job market. Egyptians say they were maltreated by police who came to break up a fight between them and Bangladeshi nationals, sparking the violence.

But underlying the tensions, workers here say, was the fact that many Egyptians are brought into the country by sponsors who charge them some $3,000 to obtain residency permits. The laborers, who tend to take jobs as drivers and construction workers, are often unable to find enough work to pay off their debts - or an employer who will give them the wages promised them.

Though workers who run into problems with employers can seek recourse with the police, Kuwaitis say a foreigner's claims usually do not stand up against a citizen's.

Dalisai, for example, tried to fight back.

A housemaid from the Philippines who asked that her last name not be used, Dalisai says she wasn't receiving her salary regularly. She told her employer that she would complain to the police or leave. Instead, she says, her employer beat her to it, telling the police that Dalisai stole money from them.

That, says Beirut-based human rights lawyer Mirela Abu Sater, is a common maneuver in Lebanon where domestic workers from similar countries are also unprotected by labor laws.

"When the maid runs away, the police cannot just go and catch her because she left, so they make a complaint for theft, so that the police can make a search for her and bring her back to the house," says Ms. Abu Sater. "Or sometimes, when the employer doesn't want her anymore and wants to send her back home, he accuses her of stealing ... and doesn't have to pay her salary."

Dalisai was jailed for a month without trial. It was only through the efforts of a friend's lawyer that she was released. Instead, he found her a job at a small dress factory. In it, about 60 foreign laborers needle away at intricate fabrics in a crowded, uncomfortably warm workshop above the store. Downstairs, Kuwaiti women pick out materials for custom-made dresses in an elegantly appointed and air-conditioned shop. "We can't say no to these jobs," says Dalisai, who has been in Kuwait since 1984, "because there isn't anything better back home."

It is in everyone's interest, Kuwaiti officials argue, to improve the wheel, but not reinvent it.

"This system is a business relationship that makes it advantageous for both the workers and the employers. It is not a bad reality," says Shafeeq N. Ghabra, the director of the Kuwait Information Office in Washington, D.C. "This doesn't mean there shouldn't be ways in which abuse is checked."

Increased media attention to the problem, he says, has led the Kuwaiti government to crack down on such abuses, for example, by barring troublesome sponsors from bringing in more workers.

"Kuwait has grown more serious with this issue. Things have improved dramatically compared with five or six years ago, but there is always room for improvement," says Dr. Ghabra, a Kuwait University political scientist. However, he ruled out proposals such as instituting a minimum wage or allowing naturalization of veteran foreigners, some of them born in Kuwait.

"Domestic workers aren't just a problem of Kuwait, it's all over the Middle East. If it is available, then people will opt for it," he says. "The majority of our experiences have been very positive, and the workers become part of the family. If most cases were so negative, they would not keep coming to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia."

But Abu Sater says that until labor laws are made applicable to domestic workers, abuses will continue. "Their condition is the condition of slaves," she says of Lebanon's domestic laborers. "What does a slave mean? It means someone who must do whatever you want for as many hours as you want. The foreign workers have to work as long as the employer asks, the payment is very arbitrary, there is no fixed wage, and some people don't get paid at all. That, combined [with the] fact that they don't allow her to hold her travel papers, as though they possess her, is like slavery."

(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society

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