Sri Lankan Women and the Middle East - there's more to it.

My last post on the lives of Sri Lankan women employed in the Middle East attracted a great comment from lanka personalities who had made some absorbing observations on this issue through first hand experience that I thought I should publish as a separate post so that it can reach a wider range of readers. So here is the original comment posted by lanka personalities in his own words and I think his ideas need some serious attention from the responsible personnel.


As a Sri Lankan, living and working in the Middle East since 1979, my family and I have raised this issue with almost every single Ambassador who was appointed to serve in KSA with a view to woo the government back home to ban this evil business of sending women to work as maids, but to no apparent avail as the nations seems to need the foreign exchange that the girls send back home each month, badly.

What a price to pay for the dignity of our impoverished yet beautiful women? Sad but true.

To give you a brief synopsis of the saga that this terrible trade spits out, please see the bullets below for your information:-

1. Vacancies for house maids in the ME are not advertised in newspapers like it is done for most other jobs

2. Recruitment agencies employ Middle Men on a commission basis, who have some significant presence and impact on remote villages, to procure the required girls for the available jobs.

3. These Middle Men (MM's) go house to house in their respective villages and woo the parents and siblings of the ladies to send them to the ME for supposedly "lucrative" employment in the ME region

4. The girls are bundled up by these MM's and shipped to Colombo for the paperwork that is needed to be carried out by the recruiting agent. This is the first point of abuse by the MM's himself who has all the girls under his custody during the tiring train/bus ride from the distant village to Colombo with whatever stops in between in guest houses and motels.

5. Once handed over to the recruitment agent the girls are at the mercy of their staff, mostly men, who are next in line to abuse the girls at their own whims and fancy.

6. The next firing line are the staff working in the various appointed medical centers where the girls have to undergo a rigorous medical check up and physical where they have to undress completely and thereby expose themselves to the viles of these dubious wolves.

7. Once the paperwork is done and the visas obtained the girls are shipped like cattle to various ME nations. During all of the above events the girls are housed in shabby ghetto type accommodation in various holes in the city.

8. On arrival at the various ME airports the girls are again hounded like animals and kept in enclosed areas within the airport basements for their sponsors to come and get them. Sometimes this takes as long as a week as many sponsors simply don’t care to ensure when the girls are picked up and taken to their respective destinations on time. During this period food and water is absolutely scarce and the girls are virtually starving until they are sent to their places of work.

9. No need for me to elaborate on the sexual and other abuse that the girls suffer at the hands of their employers inside the homes where they work in the ME since this a well known fact that has been documented and reported on by all media across the globe, in no uncertain terms.

10. Many of the girls who suffer such abuse run away from their homes to their respective Embassies in the cities they live, by hailing taxis run by Pakistanis, Afghans and Indians who very often, first, take them to their own residences and apartments and do their thing on them before bringing the girls to their expected destinations. The girls have no choice but to comply in view of the situation they are placed in. The Taxi Drivers are very alert and knowing who is a culpable candidate for such abuse through sheer experience on the road through time.

11. Most of these ME Embassies have established a villa (or accommodation) to house these girls during which time their cases are handled by the Embassy staff together with their sponsors etc. Another form of abuse now takes place inside these villas by the very Embassy staff from whom they are seeking redress from. There was a particular case in a ME Capital at the Sri Lanka Embassy Villa for housing these girls where the lady in charge of them (Matron) and her husband indulged in peddling them for cash under cover of darkness while they waited the resolution of their cases.

12. On return to their home countries the women are faced with another debacle that is absolutely appalling.

13. Since the girls send remittances to their spouses back home in order to keep the home fires burning and also take care of their kids these macho new rich men (husbands) start flaunting their new found revenue in the villages with their friends dabbling in alcoholic binges, wine women and song, dissolving the hard earned money of their wives overseas. Some even marry other women or keep them as mistresses squandering this hard earned money so easily.

14. In recent times various surveys in Sri Lanka have shown a massive rise n incest between fathers and daughters whose wives have left them behind for greener pastures in the ME. This again is caused by the consumption of alcohol and the availability of the daughter at home unprotected. Nothing is being done by the authorities to prevent or stop this as it is taking place within the confines of a family home where the law seems to be helpless. Many such daughters have become pregnant by their own fathers.

15. Sri Lanka sends the largest volume of housemaids to the ME and at the lowest cost (as low as USD 11 per month on 3 year contracts)

16. Another aspect of this evil trade is the presence of the "Housemaid Mafia" in most cities and towns where the girls employed in these ME homes band together through direct contact (when families visit one another) and through the means of mobile phones. This Mafia acts as a Godfather to the new entries into the locality grooming them on how and what to do in situations and also acting as a mentor to discuss and resolve their various internal issues. In most cases it is this Mafia that spoils the girls and ruins them teaching them the rules of the game, which lands them in even deeper trouble, under the mistaken assumption that it is for their own benefit and protection.

17. Another ploy hat takes place in this trade is that the girls, in agreement with the Middle Men back home, start complaining about some false health issue or cooked up domestic problem and request to be sent back home after working for 3 to 6 months. Once achieved they contact the same Middle Man again and return to a different home in the ME. This recycling process brings money both to the Middle Man (from the recruiting agency) and also the Housemaid (from the Middle Man, who doesn’t mind sharing his booty as long as it pours in on a regular basis).

It’s a vicious cycle of evil from start to end.

In my view no amount of regulatory controls, rules, regulations, and checks and balances can stem the above from continuing unabated or even getting worse than what it is now.

The only way out is to ban the trade completely since the girls are totally at the mercy of their custodian at any time during the whole epic saga from beginning to end and are also abused by every single one of them at every turn, since men will always be men, wherever on the planet.

Sri Lanka has many social service organizations, WIN (Women in Need), Sarvodaya, ACWBC, etc who should take this issue up seriously with the authorities and stop this filthy trade immediately.

I don’t think he Buddha would have approved of this at all!