By LINAH BENYAWA
As the quest for working abroad heightens for many skilled and semi-skilled Kenyans, only a handful know the implications of working in countries where labour laws are hardly emphasised.
Some have even ignored media reports of gross brutality toward foreign labourers in some countries and gone ahead to embark on trips abroad, expecting greener pastures only to undergo modern-day slavery.
And for Fatuma Mwatete, her story is taking a strange twist after it emerged her family cannot trace her months after she travelled to Saudi Arabia.
This worries her husband Juma Mwandodo, who fears his family will be torn apart by worries since they lost touch with Fatuma.
Mwadodo is a troubled man and fears the worse could have happened, but still hopes she could be okay.
“The last time I spoke to my wife was on January 31. This is worrying because I don’t know what could have happened to her,” Mwandodo cries out.
Fatuma travelled to Saudi Arabia on November 24, last year, and when she reached Riyadh, she called the husband to inform him she was safe and was waiting to catch the next flight to Medina.
And after two weeks, Fatuma called her husband using her employer’s telephone to inform him she was okay though she was to work as a housemaid, which was not in the agreement letter she signed with the Kenyan agent.
“My wife was a trained nurse before she left for Saudi Arabia and that’s the kind of work her agent had promised she would be offered there. But on reaching there, she was introduced to her employer, who informed her she would be a housemaid,” he says.
