In most countries, working as a housewife or nanny is a relatively safe profession.
However, while traveling through Kenya and Uganda, from crowded and poor urban districts to distant agricultural villages, we have heard many variations in the same horror story: young, healthy women embarked on domestic affairs in Saudi Arabia, just to return beaten, wiped out or in coffins.
At least 274 Kenyans, almost all women, died in Saudi Arabia in the last five years. At least 55 died only last year, twice the previous year.
The autopsy only asked more questions. The body of the Uganda woman showed extensive bruises and signs of electricity, but her death was marked “natural”. We found a surprising number of women who fell from the roofs, balconies or, in one case, the air conditioner opening.
How could that be? This is hardly an obscure industry with flying players. East African women recruit thousands and dressed by well -established companies, and then sent to Saudi Arabia through the process of regulated and approved by the Uganda, Kenyan and Saudi governments.
Proponents of workers have long blamed archaic Saudi Labor Laws. But we wondered that something else was in the game. We spent almost a year trying to understand it.
Workers are sold a dream that often becomes a nightmare.
We interviewed more than 90 workers and their families and carefully analyzed employment contracts whenever we could.
We have found that women from Kenya and Uganda have been lured in Saudi Arabia with promises of better wages and capabilities.
Employment agencies and their intermediaries give the wrong wages information and make workers sign the contracts they cannot read.
Some women market as products. The Agency’s websites offer workers “for sale” Saudi clients. We saw the one who had the clicking option for collection.
When women arrive at the kingdom, employers often take away their passports and things. Kenyan housewives in Saudi Arabia work for $ 250 or so on a monthly basis. But many women told us that their new bosses changed or rejected them with a salary, saying, “I bought you.”
Strong people make money from these women.
Using employment contracts and, whenever we can find them, autopsy, police reports or legal documents, we began to study the companies that profited those women.
Corporate records and signs of securities brought us to powerful people, including officers who could protect those workers.
High officials in Kenya and Uganda and their families, we found that they possess roles in staff agencies.
Fabian Kyule Muli, for example, is a member of the Kenya Parliament and also owns an agency that sends women to Saudi Arabia. He is the Vice President of the Parliamentary Committee for Work, a job that can bring laws that protect workers. The committee was sometimes a champion to send more people to Saudi Arabia and denied that workers were injured there.
In Saudi Arabia, members of the royal family, including the descendants of King Faisala, were the main investors in agencies that supply domestic workers. Senior Saudi officials also have high positions with staff agencies.
Despite the years of increasing evidence of abuse, the leaders, including President William Ruto of Kenya, vowed to send more workers abroad. One of his best advisers owned a staff company. As well as SiDrack Nzaire, who is identified by the Uganda media as the brother of the longtime president of that country, Yoweri Musevee.
The women who were abused were a little addressed.
In interviews, women told us through tears that their bosses in Saudi Arabia rejected food, raped them, attacked them with whitening, or stabbed them.
However, the Governments of Eastern Africa have neglected the calls of activists and a group of human rights to negotiate better agreements on work with Saudi Arabia. Employment contracts Include only minimum workers’ protective measures.
The Saudi government says its implementation of law and courts protect workers from abuse and help them seek a refund. But women told us that they were unable to approach such resources, and police sent them back to employers dealing with abuse or government facilities that felt like prisons.
Many abused workers have to pay their own flight home, despite the regulations that they should not do so. Our reporting revealed that desperate workers often returned home broken, disabled and suicide.
And in cases of serious injuries or deaths, families must move through web bureaucracy, apathy and impunity. In Uganda, Isiko Moses Waiswa told us that he had learned that his wife had died in Saudi Arabia.
Her employer gave him a choice: her body or $ 2800 salaries.
“I told him you were sending me money or you don’t send me money, I, I want my wife’s body,” Mr. Waiswa told us.
