Maid Murderer?

Today's Arab Times...

Hunt launched for Nepali maid in murder of Filipina colleague

KUWAIT CITY: A Nepali housemaid strangled her Filipina colleague to death in their sponsor’s house in Shamiya before escaping. The cousin of the house owner, who is currently out of Kuwait, called securitymen when he found the Filipina maid lying dead on the bed. When securitymen rushed to the scene they found that the bedroom, which was shared by the two maids, was a total mess and the Nepali maid was missing. Forensic officials examined the corpse and concluded the Filipina maid had died due to strangling. Securitymen are investigating the case and are looking for the Nepali maid.

Call me cynical, but I smell a rat. I wouldn't be surprised if Nepali maid is missing due to either a) also meeting a similar fate, b) not wanting to be accused of murder, even though innocent, and doesn't want to hang around to prove innocence whilst suffering at the hands of the police, or c) is absconding from the real murderer...

New Contracts for Domestics

Here's some good news, in theory, for new maids arriving in Kuwait, as reported in today's Arab Times...

New contract gives domestic workers KD 40 salary, day off

KUWAIT : With the labour sector comprising an important component of economic and social affairs within any country, the Interior Ministry announced plans to intervene in the issuance of domestic labour contracts. Major General Thabet Al-Muhanna, the Interior Ministry’s undersecretary and Colonel Adel Hashash, head of Public Relations spoke of the Ministry’s plans to intervene in domestic labour contracts through a new law that will be enforceable as of July 01. Speaking at a press conference Sunday, Al-Muhanna said the contracts will be signed by three parties instead of the previous two.

“The contracts shall now be signed by the domestic labour office, the sponsor and the worker”, Al-Muhanna said. He added that the contract will be signed under terms and conditions which provide the domestic helper no less than a monthly salary of KD 40 and a day of rest each week within or outside the premises of the house. “All these are carried out to ensure safe and healthy conditions of the worker’s atmosphere and deliver an objective to Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti sponsors”, he said.

I'm not sure that it will make a difference. The Domestic Labour Office is only another level of bureacratic rubber-stamping. Everyone knows that salaries in contracts are falsified. What a maid is actually paid will continue to bear no relation to what it says on the contract, no matter how many people rubber-stamp it. Similarly, who's going to monitor whether a maid gets their day off? Are we going to see a change of heart by employers to let their maids take a day off? Will Kuwait's shopping malls and other public places be packed with maids on Fridays having their day off? Unless domestic workers'' rights are covered by labour legislation which is supported & upheld by a judicial system, then this is just another good intention, that in reality will be ignored by the hoi polloi.

Deport the Innocents; Ignore the Guilty

Well, OK, maybe they're not exactly innocent, but desperate times call for desperate measures. In today's Arab Times, but this could be any day's...

30 female staff detained: During a four-hour campaign Friday 15 inspectors from
the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor in cooperation with 25 policemen raided
several billiard halls after dusk and arrested 30 female employees for violating
labor law which bars women from working in men’s halls after 7:00 pm, reports
Al-Watan daily. The violators have been referred to concerned authorities prior
to their deportation from the country.

What I'd be interested in knowing is a) do these women know that they're working illegally? and b) what's being done about their billiard hall employers? If they're just prostitutes (which is what the new law is trying to prevent), then the question still applies - what happens to the pimps / men paying for their services? ... you can guess the answer to that.

If you dig a bit deeper, you'll probably find that most of the female staff are illegals because they have runaway from abusive employers...