Merchants of death: On the trail of Nairobi ‘slave’ buyers to brutal Arabs

Salome Nduta who is a former worker in Saudi Arabia weeps at a presser at a Nairobi hotel on Thursday,September 11 and asked the Government to intervene and return back many ladies working in Saudi Arabia. PHOTO:COLLINS KWEYU/STANDARD

The ban on more than 900 agencies which recruit domestic workers for Saudi Arabian employers came on September 29 amid a mad rush for housekeeping jobs in the Western Asia kingdom.

Even as hundreds of women queued in Nairobi offices for Saudi jobs, hundreds others are languishing in Saudi jails or agent ‘depots,’ awaiting repatriation or new employment after harrowing experiences at the hands of previous employers.

Most had heart-rending tales of torture or are ailing, even as their Nairobi agents made empty promises that they would be airlifted back to the country.

One of the victims is Elizabeth Wangui, who was wasting in a Saudi’s agent ‘safe house’ in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, some 1,400 kilometres from Riyadh to the north west of that country.

Wangui, who ventured into Saudi Arabia three months ago was overworked by her employers, resulting in a medical complication due to an old caesarean section operation.

She was ‘returned’ to her Saudi agent, who is now reportedly physically torturing her and denying her food.

The agent is insisting that she has to go back to work, even though all she now wants is to come back to Kenya, and be paid her three months wages.

On October 1, this writer talked to a distressed Wangui, who with many other girls, was being held in a Saudi agent’s house.

“Here we sleep on a cold floor and are denied food. Our heads are often hit on the walls and we are forced to sometimes continuously stand for four hours. They insist that we should go back to work, but we are too sick. A few hours ago, one Kenyan who was bleeding profusely was taken away. We don’t know where to,” she said on phone.

According to her cousin, Naomi Waithera, the two were sent to Saudi Arabia by the same agent in Nairobi, but Waithera managed to come back in August.

She had been promised a housekeeping job, but on arrival, she was forced to nurse an old woman. The work included injecting her with insulin and changing her diapers.

Waithera gave us the name of the agency based at Watersys Plaza along Keekorok Road in Nairobi.

She managed to give us details of the room where she was being held in Saudi Arabia, including the name of the building, floor and contact details.  However, the number did not go through when we tried to reach the agency.

 An officer at the diaspora desk in the foreign affairs ministry recently said they had not received any reports on cases of exploitation by agencies, but disclosed that the matter was complicated by agents who send domestic workers to Saudi Arabia without notifying the ministry.

“This means that neither we at the ministry, nor the embassy is aware of the whereabouts of these people,” the officer told The Nairobian.

She said the issue of airlifting mistreated Kenyans back home was further complicated by the fact that most employers in Saudi Arabia confiscate their workers’ passports immediately they arrive in the country.

As there are many stranded immigrant workers in Saudi jails, it could take long to verify an individual’s citizenship without the cooperation of local agents.

“When we get information on alleged stranded Kenyans, we arrange to have their fingerprints taken for verification, before preparing travel documents and tickets to facilitate their travel back home,” the ministry official said.

So big is the problem in Saudi Arabia that according to the officer, last year the government repatriated 800 Kenyans from the Arabian country.

The domestic workers are ‘sold into slavery’ in Saudi Arabia by dubious agents who are mostly only known to them by their first names, but not through their official agencies.

While revoking the licenses of the recruitment agencies, the labour ministry also disclosed that most of the recruiting agents are not registered with the ministry.

All recruiting agents to the Gulf Region will now have to apply afresh and go through vetting.

How the recruits end up in Saudi

The recruiting agents who keep changing their offices in the city have been employing the services of equally crooked brokers who scout for vulnerable women in the villages and towns, mostly in and around Kiambu and Mombasa. It is these unsuspecting and desperate women who are ‘delivered’ to agents who promise them the ‘milk and honey’ of employment in Saudi Arabia.

The agents then quickly arrange for travel documents and swear them into secrecy not to divulge information on the ‘business.’ The confidence of the most desperate ones is further earned by ‘advance’ payments.

Within two weeks, the recruits would be at the airport ready to fly out.

Most of them don’t even know they are headed to Saudi Arabia until they are airborne or on landing at King Fahd Airport in Dammam, from where they are bussed over 1,200 kilometres to a desolate desert town in the north of the country.

During recruitment, the women are made to believe that they would be working for royal families in Riyadh, Qatar or Lebanon. But this is never the case, and it is always too late for them by the time they are ambushed with contracts at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

Once they get employment with the Arabs in the far flung towns, their passports and mobile phones are confiscated, all their clothes are burnt and they are given maternity-like long dresses, multiple sources have revealed.

They end up being tortured, denied food and there have even been cases of some being killed, with their bodies allegedly being thrown into gutters or buried in shallow graves. Those who manage to get back home are the few and lucky ones.