Eight
months after government banned the export of Ugandan women to work as
house- maids in the Middle East due to mistreatment, traffickers are
using the internet to net their victims, The Observer has learnt.
This was revealed
by 22-year-old Grace Apio*, who has just returned from a tragic
three-week stint in the United Arab Emirates, where she lost a colleague
to suicide.
This is the latest
twist in the often heart-rending story of desperate Ugandans lured by
the promise jobs in the East only to see their dreams crushed by abuse.
In an interview with The Observer, Apio told us of a clique of Ugandan
'agents' both here and in the UAE. They use the internet to net young
women looking for greener pastures but who end up being used as sex
slaves and mistreated house helps.
"I got the contact
from the internet. As I was surfing for jobs abroad, a Google ad popped
up and when I clicked on it, there was a WhatsApp number," said Grace,
who stopped in Senior six. "When I contacted the owner, I was happy to
know that it was a Ugandan who later connected me to his colleagues in
Entebbe who were to help me process documents to leave," she said.
Grace, and another
Ugandan woman, paid between Shs 1.8m and Shs 2m each for a flight to Abu
Dhabi and were picked from the airport by a contact who took them to
their place of work. On arrival, Grace saw her soon-to-be bosses giving
money to her contact before she and her colleague were handed over.
"We had to wash
about 20 cars each morning and look after a family of about 30 people.
This was on top of no food, being beaten for any delay and getting
insults," she said.
According to Grace,
her colleague committed suicide within days and she (Grace) asked her
bosses to let her go since she couldn't do all the work alone.
"They immediately
locked me up in a small room and asked me to pay the money they had
spent on my journey from Uganda which was about Shs 6m," she said.
"The house wife
occasionally lent me her phone to talk to my people back home and ask
for money so I could be released or else they would regret what would
happen to me."
Grace says she was lucky to escape with the help of her boss's son, who gave her some money to take her to the Ugandan embassy.
"When I arrived, I
found four more Ugandan women waiting outside the [embassy] gate. The
officials told us that they couldn't help us but had to hand us over to
police," she said.
Asked by email to
respond to Grace's accusation that they failed to assist distressed
Ugandans at their gate, our embassy officials in Abu Dhabi referred us
to the ministry of foreign affairs.
By press time, the foreign affairs permanent secretary, Ambassador James Mugume, had not responded to our e-mail inquiries.
Pius Bigirimaana,
the permanent secretary in the ministry of gender, labour and social
development, said he wasn't aware of this trend in the movement of
Ugandan maids abroad.
"I do not have any
information on that issue but we are working very hard to see that we
can normalize the situation," Bigirimaana said by telephone.
RACKET
The Observer has
learnt that the recruiting individuals operate both in Uganda and
various Middle Eastern countries. The agents abroad spot the jobs and
those in Uganda do the recruitment.
They have opened up
Facebook accounts and run Google adverts to hook clients in Uganda. One
of the agents we talked to said he gets a com- mission of around $500
on each young woman delivered to a client in the Arab world.
"On top of that,
the boss is supposed to pay for the girl's air ticket and we wait for
her at the airport," he said in a WhatsApp conversation. "As soon as we
deliver the girl and we are paid, our job is done."
He disclosed that
they have a string of agents in the country who help make the women's
movement easier. Most of the women are channeled through Kenya.
In January this
year, the Ugandan government banned its citizens from taking jobs as
domestic workers in Arab countries, after reports that they were often
abused and exploited by their employers. The then minister for gender,
Wilson Muruli Mukasa, in a letter to the ministry of foreign affairs,
said the ban would remain in force until the employment conditions were
deemed fitting.
However, last week,
the minister of state for labour, Herbert Kabafunzaki, suggested that
the existing contracts of private companies taking domestic workers
abroad should be allowed to run. Masaka Municipality MP Mathias Mpuuga,
who opposed the suggestion during the session, told The Observer that
the minister's statement was ambiguous.
"I brought a motion
to parliament to form a separate committee to investigate companies,
individuals and any other persons involved but the speaker overruled it
saying it would be undermining the committee on gender," Mpuuga said by
telephone.
Kitgum Woman MP
Beatrice Anywar, the vice chairperson of the committee on gender, labour
and social development, told The Observer there is need for a law on
taking workers out of the country. She urged government to disclose
contents of memoranda signed between recruiting firms and destination
countries.
"As a committee, we
intend to go to those countries where many of our people work and meet
them," Anywar said. "We shall meet those that we will be able in
countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and others and we shall visit all
foreign missions in those countries too."
*Names of victims have been changed to protect them from possible reprisals
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