Foreign workers suffer under sponsor system
After working for a year without a day off, Eva, a 37-year-old Filipino housekeeper in Riyadh, wanted a holiday. Her employer thought otherwise, and demanded payment of SR8,000 ($2,139) to obtain her exit visa.
“I just wanted to go home to see my children,” says Eva, who asked that her surname be withheld while she continues working in the household. “Madame agreed to sign my exit visa only after I threatened to kill myself.”
Saudi Arabia, along with most Arab Gulf states, applies a kafala or sponsorship system in which 8m foreign residents in the kingdom, from investment bankers to house maids, work under a sponsor/employer, known as a kafeel. The sponsor is responsible for the resident, and must approve exit visas. Without the exit visa, no foreign resident of Saudi Arabia, not even the deceased, may leave.
To prevent foreign workers from switching to other employers, sponsors often confiscate passports or withhold salaries. While professionals can go to court to settle disputes, the law does not apply to the roughly 2m private domestic helpers.
The total control of the employer often results in workers being abused, overworked and denied wages, according to Human Rights Watch and the Saudi National Society for Human Rights. The SNSHR says 12 percent of the complaints it receives come from domestic workers.
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