Amid outrage over Saudi maid attack, India mulls ban on workers

The first hint that India might ban the recruitment of maids to Saudi Arabia came when an MP from Tamil Nadu, D Raja, said a parliamentary committee met to discuss the idea.

Screengrab of Youtube video showing Kasturi Munirathinam, originally from the south Indian city of Chennai, who alleged that her Saudi employer chopped off her hand when she complained about her work conditions. (Youtube Video)Show less

NEW DELHI // The Indian government might ban citizens from working as domestic helpers in Saudi Arabia after a housemaid in Riyadh had her arm chopped off, allegedly by her employer.

Kasthuri Munirathinam, 58, said her right arm had been hacked off by her sponsor on September 29. She had earlier complained to police that she was being mistreated and not being fed or paid sufficiently, according to her family, who hail from Tamil Nadu state.

Television footage showed Ms Munirathinam in a Riyadh hospital with bandages covering a stump just below her right shoulder.

She described how she tried to escape from the house by tying a sari to a balcony railing and said that was when her employer – who has not been named – attacked her.

“We are very disturbed over the brutal manner in which the Indian lady has been treated in Saudi Arabia,” said Sushma Swaraj, India’s foreign minister.

Vikas Swarup, a foreign ministry spokesman, said the Indian embassy in Riyadh had taken up the matter with the Saudi foreign office and asked for strict action in the matter.

“We have also sought an independent probe in the incident and urged that a case of attempted murder be lodged against the sponsor so that he is punished, if found guilty as per law.” Mr Swarup said.

The attack follows another high-profile incident in early September in which two Nepali maids accused a Saudi Arabian embassy official in Delhi was accused of raping, assaulting, starving and holding them hostage.

“They would beat us every night and often there were more than one man who would torture and rape us,” one of the women said. “We have marks all over our body.”

The official left India a week after these complaints were registered, claiming diplomatic immunity. The embassy called the allegations “completely baseless”.

In the same month, a video of a Saudi employer hitting a male Indian worker went viral in India.

The first hint that India might ban the recruitment of maids to Saudi Arabia came on Saturday from D Raja, an MP from Tamil Nadu, who said a parliamentary committee met last week to discuss the idea. “We discussed how to stop the flow of housemaids from Tamil Nadu’s Nellore and West Godavri district of Andhra Pradesh, which top the list of regions producing housemaids for the Saudi Kingdom,” Mr Raja said. He said Saudi Arabian employers had frequently broken Indian laws on the recruitment of labour by 18 countries in the Middle East and South-East Asia.

Indian government figures show that there are roughly 2.8 million citizens working in Saudi Arabia. Of these, half a million are domestic workers, and about 50,000 are women. The Saudi labour ministry said last year that it would issue 100,000 work visas for Indian domestic workers during 2015. But in reality, there is no reliable estimate of the number of Indian women who work as housemaids in Saudi Arabia. Many such workers leave on short-visit visas, which do not require attestation by Indian authorities. Once they arrive in Saudi Arabia or other Middle Eastern countries, their visas are changed to employment visas.

In this way employers avoid the US$2,500 (Dh9,200) bank guarantee that they are required to deposit with the Indian embassy for each hire, under a scheme formulated in 2007.

Last year, Indian and Saudi authorities agreed on a standard contract for Indian domestic workers, a minimum monthly wage of 1,500 Saudi riyals (Dh1,470) and a list of 27 approved private recruitment agencies. However, the agreement did not touch on working conditions such as hours of service and freedom of communication and movement.

Raman Mahadevan, a Chennai-based economic historian who has studied migrant labour patterns, told The National that he did not think an outright ban would work.

“All this hiring is happening in the private sphere, by private recruitment agencies,” he said. “How would the government even enforce something like this?

“Besides, people do want to go to work there, even though they’re very aware of such stories filtering out of the region,” Mr Mahadevan said. “The employment scenario in India is very bleak. Any opportunities to go overseas to work are immediately snapped up.”

In any case, India is not the only source of domestic workers to the region, he said.

“There are the Philippines, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka also. It’s a very competitive market, and I don’t think these moves will hurt the Saudis.”