Kenyan households tormented over maids’ ‘mysterious’ deaths in Saudi Arabia

Alice Awor Tindo had solely been working in Saudi Arabia for 3 months when mates and family again house in Kenya started receiving distressed calls and WhatsApp messages.
The 30-year-old home employee instructed them her employer had confiscated her passport and refused to pay her. She had been banned from having a cellphone, so needed to cover hers, and needed to change to a special family.
“I am not in a good condition,” the only mom wrote in a message within the Kikuyu language, dated June 9, 2020, proven to the Thomson Reuters Foundation by her household.
“I told my employer that I want to change jobs, but she told me that I will only leave this place when I am dead.”
Four days later, Tindo’s physique was discovered mendacity in her bed room by her employer in Saudi’s Najran province.
A Saudi police report given to her household concluded that she had died in her sleep, the trigger declared as “normal death”.
But her father, John Awor Tindo, disputes this.
“Alice was a healthy young woman,” stated the 56-year-old farmer, standing by his daughter’s unmarked grave on a hillside cemetery close to their house within the western city of Elburgon.
“It’s very mysterious. No one can just die in their sleep like that for no reason. There must be a cause. There should have been some follow-up.”
The Tindo household are amongst a rising variety of bereaved Kenyan households sounding the alarm over the sudden deaths of feminine family working in Saudi Arabia.
Over the final two years, 89 Kenyans – greater than half of them feminine home employees – have died within the Gulf nation, in line with Kenya’s overseas ministry. In 2019, simply three deaths had been recorded.
The explanation for demise is especially given as cardiac arrest, pure demise or suicide. But many households are unconvinced, and rights teams suppose the deaths could also be linked to a surge in abuse towards home employees throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We believe they were killed,” stated Fredrick Gaya, a social activist, who has petitioned the Kenyan parliament on behalf of greater than 30 households and mistreated migrant employees.
“These women were suffering in the days before they died … they were being tortured by their employers. Some were burned with hot water or had dogs set on them. It’s not possible they all died of cardiac arrest or natural causes.”
Officials in neighbouring Uganda have additionally voiced concern concerning the deaths of its nationals in Saudi Arabia and different Gulf nations in latest months.
Three Saudi authorities ministries and the embassy in Nairobi didn’t reply to requests for remark.
‘They return in coffins’
Gaya stated no autopsy examinations to verify the causes of deaths had been carried out when the our bodies had been repatriated, including that Kenyan authorities must be doing this.
To make issues worse, he stated, many grieving family face a determined wrestle to carry again their family members’ stays – typically involving months of painful forms and costing 1000’s of {dollars}, he added.
Many need to fundraise or take out loans to pay the invoice, with these unable to boost the cash pressured to go away Saudi authorities to cope with their family members’ stays.
Kenya’s overseas ministry, which has raised issues over the deaths, didn’t reply to requests for an interview.
Saudi Arabia depends on thousands and thousands of low-paid overseas employees to carry out home jobs from home maids, care-givers and nannies to drivers and safety guards.
More than 30% of the oil-rich kingdom’s inhabitants of 35 million are migrants, many from Asian and African nations.
But Saudi Arabia – together with different Gulf nations such because the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman – has lengthy confronted criticism from rights teams for a sponsorship system that leaves migrant employees open to abuse and exploitation.
Under the “kafala” system, a overseas home employee’s authorized standing is tied to their employer they usually can not change jobs or depart the nation with out permission.
This has led to widespread abuses of migrant employees – from passport confiscation, unpaid wages and extreme work hours, to beatings and even rape by male members of the family.
“These young women go there with big hopes of changing their lives, but they end up suffering,” stated Hussein Khalid, government director of HAKI Africa, a Kenyan charity that helps migrant employees within the Gulf.
“They are tortured and trapped by their employers. In some cases, they are deported or they return in coffins,” Khalid stated.
Attracted by the promise of well-paid work and an opportunity to flee joblessness at house, greater than 100,000 Kenyans work in Saudi Arabia – sending house thousands and thousands of {dollars} yearly, authorities and central financial institution knowledge reveals.
In 2020, remittances from the Gulf nation totalled greater than $120 million – up 50% from the earlier yr.
Drawn from poor communities in small cities and villages, maids are recruited by native businesses providing two-year contracts with a month-to-month wage of about 25,000 Kenyan Shillings ($220)- greater than thrice what they might earn in Kenya.
For many ladies, it’s a uncommon alternative to avoid wasting their earnings and purchase land, construct a home or begin a small enterprise in addition to ship cash house.
Cries for assist
But generally, inside weeks of arriving within the Gulf state, the distraught calls and cries for assist start.
Those who escape abuse by the hands of their employers change into undocumented, and liable to exploitation by traffickers who promote them into one other abusive family, or the intercourse commerce.
If they’re discovered by the police, they face costs for absconding and are sometimes detained for months earlier than being deported, rights teams stated.
There had been 1,025 instances of Kenyans in misery within the final yr in contrast with 883 in 2019, in line with the overseas ministry, however relations stated employees’ cries for assist typically go unheeded.
“My sister was being tortured there. She sent messages about how she was scared and that her boss was trying to kill her just days before she died,” stated Stephen Oluoch, whose sister Caroline died within the Arab nation in April.
“When you call the agent, they’re rude. The embassy in Riyadh doesn’t even respond to messages or say they will follow-up but never do. If someone had listened, her death could have been prevented.”
He stated Caroline, a 24-year-old second-year college scholar from the western city of Homa Bay, took a job as a maid in Saudi Arabia final November to earn cash to finish her diploma and change into a trainer.
Five months after her arrival, her bare physique was discovered coated in a sheet within the lavatory of a psychiatric hospital.
Saudi police stated she died by hanging and declared the reason for demise as suicide, however her household thinks she was murdered. They say she was forcefully admitted to the hospital by her employer after she tried to flee.
‘We are sorry’
Addressing a parliamentary committee in September, a senior Kenyan overseas ministry official raised questions concerning the deaths.
“It’s not possible that these young people are all dying of cardiac arrest,” Principal Secretary Macharia Kamau stated, including that no follow-up investigations into the deaths had been carried out by Kenyan authorities.
The overseas ministry, the households and social activists need a short-term ban on home employees going to Saudi Arabia.
But Peter Tum, principal secretary on the labour ministry, stated bans don’t work.
Kenya stopped employees going to the Gulf from 2014 to 2018 due to abuses, however the transfer led to extra unlawful migration and instances of mistreatment, he stated, including that unlicensed recruitment businesses had been typically guilty for violations.
“We are sorry as a government that these things are happening,” Tum instructed the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“We really feel for the families that have lost their loved ones in this kind of manner … this is something that has absolutely disturbed us,” he stated.
The authorities is taking a collection of measures to “once and for all” finish abuses towards Kenyan employees, and can evaluation Nairobi’s present settlement with Riyadh to higher shield these in Saudi Arabia, Tum stated.
A authorities delegation is anticipated to go to Saudi Arabia earlier than the tip of the yr, and plans to boost issues over the causes of the deaths of Kenyan employees, he added.
The ministry can also be stepping up vetting of hiring businesses, cancelling the licences of these with unethical practices and dealing to boost consciousness in rural areas.
More labour attaches shall be appointed on the embassy in Riyadh to enhance help, Tum added.
John Awor Tindo stated he simply desires solutions.
“Even now, I’ve been asking myself ‘how could this have happened?’,” he stated.
“It is very painful that your child has gone there for work, and then her body is brought back to you dead. If I knew what really happened to her, maybe I would finally be at ease.”