Maid torturing in Kuwait is become so common that residents in Kuwait are become accustomed to take it as a normal happening. People are become accustomed to know that locals are subjecting their maids to torturing because there are many cases where the locals are involved in performing such cruelties on their poor maids but now foreigners have also started torturing their poor maids in Kuwait and that too very ruthlessly.
Here below I reproduce a news item from the local English Daily Arab Times dated 3rd of this month to make the people aware of the harshness of the employers and sponsors here towards their poor maids. In this case, the poor maid is from Indonesia but it can be for any Goan maid as well. For this reason I alert our Goan maids coming to Kuwait to work as maids to be very careful. They must have somebody or the other as their own relative to enquire about them while they are employed as maids in Kuwait. Constant enquiring of the how about of the maids by their relatives or friends or well-wishers in Kuwait must be imperative because some of the employers are worse than wild animals, they don’t know to treat human beings as humans. It is these wild animals who are spoiling the good image of Kuwait.
QUOTE “COMPLAINT FILED WITH HAWALLY POLICE”
“LEBANESE WOMAN HELD FOR TORTURING INDONESIAN MAID”.
KUWAIT CITY. July 2: Police have detained for interrogation an unidentified Lebanese woman for torturing her Indonesian maid for four years, reports Al-Anba daily.
The arrest came when the housemaid accompanied by a representative from her Embassy, filed a complaint with Hawally Police Station.
In her complaint the made wrote the woman tortured her for four years to such an extent she finally got used to her brutal behavior.
The maid has submitted a medical report which shows she is suffering from a broken and deformed finger due to frequent torture, fractures in the teeth due to beating with blunt object, bruises in the face, congestion in the eyes and effects of a sharp object being inserted in her sensitive part in addition to wound scars on the head and different parts of her body.
According to the security sources when the maid arrived at the police station she was in a pathetic condition and it even shocked the police officers and the investigator.
During the investigation the maid said she tried in vain several times to escape from the female sponsor. She added her sponsor was very careful when she left the apartment. She kept her locked inside a room that had no windows.
The maid added she finally managed to escape because the woman forgot to lock the door of the apartment.
Deputy Attorney-General has ordered the maid to be referred to a hospital and the sponsor to the Public Prosecution.
During interrogation the female sponsor is said to have admitted to torturing the maid. UNQUOTE.
From the above news report one can easily conclude that in Kuwait many of the maids are treated like slaves in the mediaeval period. This mentioned incident must be just like a tip of an iceberg and like this there may be innumerable victims suffering cruelties and torturing from the hands of their cruel employers and sponsors. In fact maids in Kuwait are made to work more and paid less and in the eyes of Labour Laws they are invisible. As once Time Magazine correspondent writing on the woes of maids in Kuwait said that “in Kuwait maids are only existing, in the eyes of law they are not living”.
It is horrible to know that a Lebanese employer in Kuwait by being a foreigner who is like a beggar in somebody’s land is treating her maid so mercilessly. I don’t know what is wrong with these Lebanese, good that they are only Lebanese Arabs and not Western French holding French Passports. Even in many of the companies where Lebanese are holding high posts there you will find lot of discriminations against non-Lebanese. In some companies gangs of Lebanese are sprung up and these gangs with their domination over their management discriminate against non-Lebanese.
My point of publishing this news item is to caution many of my Goan sisters coming to Kuwait to work as maids should thoroughly find out in advance the real character of their employers either locals or non-locals. In this society there is not much respect for human rights. And in the words of Mahatma Gandhi “the society that treats its weaker section badly is a sick society”.
A. Veronica Fernandes,
Kuwait.
