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Domestic worker abuse increase in Kuwait
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Abuse of domestic workers in Kuwait is rising, and foreign domestic workers in Kuwait face prosecution when they try to
escape, Human Rights Watch (HRW)said on Wednesday.
The New York-based rights group said domestic workers have little protection from employers who withhold salaries, force them to work long hours with no days off, deprive them of adequate food or abuse them physically and sometimes sexually. Ten thousand complaints "The number of abuses has been rising," Priyanka Motaparthy, HRW research fellow in Middle East and North Africa, told a press conference announcing a report, which details specific cases. "In 2009, domestic workers from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines and Ethiopia filed over 10,000 complaints of abuse with their embassies," she said. "Walls at Every Turn: Exploitation of Migrant Domestic Workers Through Kuwait's Sponsorship System," the report compiled by HRW describes how workers become trapped in exploitative or abusive employment. "Employers hold all the cards in Kuwait," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW. The report was based on interviews of large number of runaway maids at either their embassies or a small government-run shelter. Foreign Domestic workers in Kuwait are not covered by any law to limit working hours or a rest day or even basic rights, the report said.
Twenty-one domestic workers interviewed by HRW said they had worked 18 hours or more per day on repeated occasions. A 2004 International Labour Organisation study found that maids in Kuwait worked for 101 hours weekly, HRW said. 950 rapes and abuses in one year The main abuses include physical and sexual abuse, non-payment or delay in payment of salary, long working hours, no weekly rest day and many others, the report said. HRW said it interviewed 22 maids who said their employers or agents had physically abused them, and seven spoke of sexual abuse. According to the report, an ambassador in Kuwait for a labour-exporting country told HRW that, during 2009, the embassy received 950 rape and sexual harassment claims. |
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The main abuses include physical and sexual abuse, non-payment or delay in payment of salary, long working hours, no weekly
rest day
India's frustration with Sri Lanka over Tamils