By RIYADH: MD RASOOLDEEN, ARAB NEWS STAFF

The Saudi government paid SR72,000 in compensation to a stranded Sri Lankan housemaid whose Saudi sponsor had not paid her wages for the last 17 years.

Kusuma Nandini, 57, who had come to Riyadh in 1994, was kept a virtual slave in the house of her employer. She was not paid her wages and was not allowed to contact anyone including her relatives back home.

Nandini’s case came to light two years ago when her 25-year-old daughter complained to the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry that she had not heard from her mother for years. Responding to the complaint, the embassy officials had visited the house and its occupants denied Nandini lived there. Following several efforts to track down the maid, embassy officials located her.

“We gave shelter to this woman and for the last two years tried to find her sponsor to obtain her outstanding wages, but unfortunately we could not trace him,” labor counselor at the Sri Lankan mission Anura Muthumala told Arab News yesterday.

Muthumala said when all the mission’s efforts failed, he contacted Tarek Al-Zahrani, director of the government-run Women’s Welfare Camp in Olaya who helped the maid obtain compensation from the Ministry of Social Affairs. “We are thankful to this officer who left no stone unturned to get this maid compensated,” the diplomat said.

“I came to Riyadh when my eldest daughter was eight years old (she is now 27),” Nandini told Arab News prior to her departure to Sri Lanka. She said she came to work in the Kingdom to pay for her children’s education.