More than 30 Ugandan women, rescued from Saudi Arabia after their ‘ordeal’ led them to appeal to return home, have narrated how they inhumanely treated in the Arab country.
The New Vision Ugandan website reports on Wednesday that most of the women “were in detention facilities” in Saudi Arabia, and urged the head of a women’s advocacy group in southwestern Uganda, Peace Rugambwa, to facilitate their return home since the middle of the year.
“When these girls told me their plight, I responded quickly and organized for their return,” Rugambwa was quoted by the website.
The ladies were returned to Uganda last Friday.
The young women explained how they were “abused, tortured and exploited by their Arab employers.”
One of the rescued ladies, Loyce Akantwala said she was in Saudi for six months, worked without pay and survived on camel’s milk.
After landing in Saudi Arabia, her passport was confiscated. She was “whisked to a huge house where she worked as a housemaid and gardener,” according to the report.
“Every time I would want to eat food, I would hide to eat the leftovers, and when they find me, they would beat me up.
“Even when I ask for some water, they would beat me. I got tired and escaped from the home, only to land in the hands of the police who arrested and detained me,” she said.
Another returnee, Hadija Nakibuka, who went through a local labor recruiting agency, expressed how relieved she was to be home.
She narrated how she would work without pay and only survived from food crabs that remain after a meal.
The women have called for “stringent regulations on labor exports” through which they have been sent to Saudi Arabia. They also demand a “well-streamlined system of follow up and supervision.”
Rugambwa, stressed that labor export companies should be held responsible “for every Ugandan they take to the Middle East.”
“The Saudi authorities are failing to enforce their labor laws to address a number of inhumane abuses against foreign workers who are now living under slave-like conditions,” the Euro-Med Monitor organization said in a 2017 report.
It referred to the Saudi sponsorship system where the working conditions of foreign workers are considerably affected, and demanded reform or abolishing it.
According to the same report, Saudi authorities have forced thousands of foreign workers to leave, where “they were severely abused by security forces and Saudi nationals during their detention and deportation.”
