Cautionary Piece...but you do not have to believe me.
'Employment agents' or 'recruitment agencies' in Nairobi advertise various jobs for the foreign market especially the Arab countries, and ask desperate job seekers to pay half the ticket fare promising they'll take care of the rest. Many people especially women have fallen for this and signed contracts that they did not bother to read, and since they really want to get in a plane and go earn those Arab money, they do not think twice about the contractual bondage they are getting into.
These contracts have clauses that make sure as a domestic worker, you cannot leave or get out of the house without permission and or, the term of the contract coming to an end or even before making enough money to pay your recruitment agency the half they paid for you, and of-course your return ticket. In short its called 'contracted Slavery', that you voluntarily got into and cannot just walk out on, which is legal when you arrive to your 'sponsor's' home. This becomes an unquestionably accepted bondage by these desperate Kenyans who wont learn by the example of others! which makes it difficult for Kenyan ambassadors in these countries to crack out on - after all its a "work" contract that you signed!...and if you annoy your sponsor enough they deny you, you will be claimed to be illegally there, which is more risk to be jailed
Most of the countries like Qatar, Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain, Some parts of Dubai and Saudi Arabia operate under the popular 'kafala system' to date, this means that when your agent takes you to these countries and hands you over to your new boss, the new boss practically & legally owns you and is responsible for your being in the country [as a willing slave i feel]. Therefore your new boss will help you in 'safe keeping' your travel documents once you set foot in their home. Documents that you will not see again... and this might include your mobile phone so that you cannot 'waste' time talking and chatting, but slaving.
Laws in these countries do not give a damn about domestic workers, so even if you think you can runaway, you will be arrested for running away, because your employer will report exactly that, your employer can even report you for stealing or hurting the baby, and where you report on rape, its their laws they can even claim its who who raped them.!
Like in Qatar, i hear the labor laws do not protect domestic workers, so running to the police to report will most-likely land you into more trouble like being locked up for many months at the 'deportees' holding centers- which to my ears sounds more like a jail.
These foreign homes hold huge extended families, families live like thirty of them in one house. Once these naive women get and meet 'evil' employers, they are forced to work for very long hours, washing, cleaning, cooking after everyone in that house...it becomes unending job that workers do without rest, and most times with little or no pay, undoubtedly.
Now, people are busy crying to the "government" to help those stuck in Saudi Arabia, after going to work and getting it rough. If this "government" was actually a person, then all these demands by hardheaded, unlistening, unheeding citizens would have maimed 'him'. People travel there without informing anyone where exactly they're going but their agents, and when they finally get 'home arrested' by employers, get no pay nor food and beaten to pulp, its when they let 'government' know they've actually been there for two years!
People have been warned time and again against travelling to Saudi Arabia to work as house helps since satan was a boy and they just NEVER listen despite all the people that have been coming out with tales on how they've suffered in the house of their employers. I cant lie, but i do not feel sorry for these people since they volunteer everyday. Furthermore. they afforded to pay a whole sixty thousand to get into the Arabian modern slavery instead of using it to start a business here. Its not easy here, but hey, we are surviving! Wouldn't you rather suffer here where you can jump over the fence at 11 pm and go home when you quarrel with your boss? No?
There are house helps paid up to twenty thousand shillings here in the city, but naive girls want to fly over, without any experience of house work and expect the angry Arabs to smile with them. House work cannot be guessed, just because you completed class eight and form four doesn't make you a qualified baby sitter, cleaner or housekeeper. You don't expect to burn a whole barrel of biriani or ruin an expensive garment and go without a beating.
The sound of 'huge' amounts of money may be attractive when recruitment agencies tell it, but its not only a mammoth lie, but the restrictive contract systems evidently leaves A LOT of room for exploitation. Those who are traveling are doing so willingly, unless someone somewhere was trafficked in a suitcase, is there one yet? Those still planning to go over there, go at your own risk. The rest of us shall be in Kenya struggling to build the country...
Kenyans, why not just work here, if especially you have to pay to go work and if you are not a qualified housekeeper, please keep your ass at home and find work that you are 'qualified' to do, or whatever work you will get.
If you're still holding the thoughts of improving your life as an unskilled domestic worker in the foreign, think twice, it shall come as a price as we've seen so far!
Sincerely,
©2015Njoki-GoodBadGirl
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