THE e-mail I received this week from a Filipino living in Riyadh
was all too-depressingly familiar: A female relative of a friend of
his is working as a maid for a Saudi family in the capital and is
being molested by her employer. The employer, or "kafeel" as they
are called in Arabic, threatened the maid with termination if she
didn't acquiesce to his lascivious advances, according to the short
telephone conversations the maid was able to have with her
relative.
When a female relative of the maid tried to visit her at her
employer's house, the Saudi man screamed at her, enraged that she
had been able to locate his house. He then lashed out and
repeatedly hit her on face, causing her to fall down. The relative,
naturally scared, turned and ran away, screaming for help from
anyone in the neighborhood.
While it is obviously true that not all Saudi employers are like
this, an alarmingly high number of them do treat their foreign
employees as modern day slaves, mere pawns that can be slapped
around and treated badly with impunity.
This boils down to the feeling of superiority that many Saudis
have. A feeling of "We're better than everyone else." Why some
Saudis feel this way is a mystery. Perhaps it is because of the
fact that Makkah and Madinah are located here in the Kingdom; that
Islam started in what is today Saudi Arabia, or perhaps it is the
vast oil wealth we have been blessed with?
No matter what it is, nothing gives anyone the right to treat
another human being as an animal or slave.
And since the Kingdom is trying to develop into an advanced and
enlightened nation, isn't it about time that we Saudis gave up on
the army of foreign nannies, maids, cooks and drivers that the keep
the whole nation running smoothly?
If European and American families have learned to survive quite
well without maids living in their homes, why can't Saudis do the
same too? Is it really that hard to take care of one's own family
and house? Lazy Saudi housewives, instead of sleeping until two in
the afternoon, after staying up all night, should wake up early
with their kids, get them ready for school and have lunch ready for
them when they come home in the afternoon. Instead, most of those
tasks are all too often left to the maids to do.
On my way to work on Wednesday I stopped at a fast-food place to
buy myself lunch and it was jammed packed with young Saudis having
lunch, when they should have been at home eating a meal with their
parents. The point is that Saudi society has become much too over
dependent on foreign workers that it treats and pays badly.
The Saudi government should announce a phase-out of all housemaids
in the next two years. Maids are the most vulnerable sector of
foreign workers as I have often said in this column.
The Philippines should stop exporting maids, and focus instead on
sending highly-qualified Pinoys abroad, who will be much more
respected and not as easily abused by unscrupulous employers as
maids are.
In the meantime, I ask that the Philippine Embassy rescue this
abused maid as soon as possible and file charges against the
employer.
Saudis cannot allow these abuses to continue, and the embassy
cannot afford to be weak in the face of such injustice.
The National Human Rights Society should also be championing the
rights of the much-abused maids, instead of meekly acting like the
declawed tiger that it currently is.
This group, that is supposed to be defending the human rights of
all in the Kingdom, should set up a taskforce to deal specifically
with abused maids and the problems they face. There are,
unfortunately, certainly enough abuse cases to warrant this.
