No salary for 18 years, says Lankan maid

Mohammed Rasooldeen

A housemaid has sought refuge in the Sri Lankan Embassy here, claiming she has not received her salary for 18 years.

The maid, who has run away from her employer, came to the mission with only SR1,500 in her possession.

She was brought there by a Sri Lankan driver who had recently come to work for the same employer. The driver told embassy officials that he helped the maid because he felt sorry for her.

"She was not in sound mental health when she arrived at the mission," an official from the embassy said, adding that she might have lost her memory because of an absence of contacts with her family for a long period.

"She might have been driven into this mental state by what she suffered at her employer's house," he said, adding that the mission does not know whether the last house where she worked was that of her original sponsor. "Maids are sometimes passed on from house to house according to a sponsor's whim," he said.

The maid, Kawlah Umma Jabeer is from Kinnya. The maid had in her possession a copy of her passport, which stated that she arrived in Riyadh in 1990.

The woman is unmarried and came to the Kingdom at the age of 40. The Sri Lankan Embassy has lodged an official complaint with the Riyadh governorate seeking an investigation. Representatives of the mission are expected to meet officials at the governorate to discuss the case.

The embassy official said the governorate has been considerate in dealing with such cases. He recalled that a maid - on the instructions of Riyadh Gov. Prince Salman - was paid SR59,000 in unpaid salaries for 14 years earlier this year.

Maids mainly run away from Saudi homes due to nonpayment of salaries, nonrepatriation on completion of work contracts, verbal or physical harassment, overwork and lack of basic facilities.

Around 80 per cent of the 550,000 Sri Lankan workers in the Kingdom are domestic helpers. Some 60,000 Sri Lankan maids came to the Kingdom last year, while 2,500 maids sought shelter in the country's missions in Riyadh and Jeddah. Considering the huge size of the Sri Lankan housemaid population, the rates of runaway maids are negligible, an embassy official said.