07-08-2006, 11:42 AM
Many of Saudi Arabia's 6-million foreign workers labor under conditions that are sometimes compared to "modern-day slavery.''
By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent
© St. Petersburg Times
published July 23, 2002
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- When 29-year-old Ramani Prianka accepted a job in Saudi Arabia, she thought it would be a pleasant way to earn more money than she could ever make in her native Sri Lanka.
After all, she would be working indoors -- as a housemaid -- for a well-to-do, educated Saudi couple. He was the manager of a big hospital; she was the principal of a school.
How tough could it be? Very tough, Prianka quickly discovered. The house had 20 rooms and 13 bathrooms, and Prianka, the only maid, was expected to clean every one every day. There were nine children, and Prianka had to wash all their clothes and cook all their food. Seven days a week, she was up at 4:30 a.m. and never got to bed before midnight. All this for the equivalent of $26 a week.
After nine months, depressed and exhausted, Prianka had enough. As the family slept, she sneaked out of the villa, flagged down a taxi and told the driver to take her to the Embassy of the Republic of Sri Lanka.
Prianka was not the only Sri Lankan maid to seek refuge in the embassy's safe house this hot June morning. There was Pushpa Chandra, 30, who was sick of fighting off sexual advances from her sponsor's teenage son. And as tears slid down her smooth brown cheeks, a tiny 26-year-old woman whispered that she had been raped by her sponsor's adult son.
Now, she sobbed, she thought she was pregnant.
Last year, at least 2,800 Sri Lankan housemaids ran away from their Saudi sponsors, claiming they had been overworked, sexually abused or physically mistreated by jealous wives. They are among the countless foreign "guest workers" in Saudi Arabia who live and work under conditions that are sometimes compared to modern-day slavery.
"The world must know about this," says Mohamed Sakoor, a Sri Lankan driver and translator who works at Riyadh's international airport. He shares a roach-and-rat-infested shed, just 8 feet by 10 feet, with three other men hired by two rich Saudi brothers.
Despite efforts to "Saudize" the work force by replacing foreigners with Saudis, the kingdom remains highly dependent on foreign labor. About two-thirds of all jobs are still held by foreigners, including almost 90 percent of those in the private sector.
No foreigner can work in the kingdom without a Saudi sponsor, who typically provides accommodations and pays travel expenses, including a trip home every one or two years. In most cases, the sponsor holds the employee's passport, and an employee cannot leave the country or change jobs without the sponsor's permission.
For nurses, engineers and other professionals from First World countries like the United States, working in Saudi Arabia can be extremely lucrative and surprisingly pleasant. Most Westerners live in walled compounds with swimming pools, tennis courts, attractive landscaping and well-stocked commissaries.
But for unskilled workers from poor countries, life in Saudi Arabia can be a very different story -- one of broken promises and stomach-churning squalor.