By Sawsan Tabazah – Mar 29,2018 -JORDAN TIMES
AMMAN — Isolated from the world, not allowed to communicate with anyone or to leave the house, Monika, a domestic worker, said she suffered behind closed doors for months before she could escape from her “prison”.
Monika is not her real name but was changed upon her request to protect her identity.
Interviewed by The Jordan Times in November last year and then via e-mail recently, Monika said her dream was to make a decent living for her two-year-old baby. “All turned into a nightmare the moment I started work for my new employer.”
“They picked me from the airport, but I immediately felt unwelcomed and I started crying” the 30-year-old women told The Jordan Times, a day after she ran away from her employer’s house in November and was hosted at the Jordanian Women
Union (JWU)’s shelter.
During her stay at her employer’s house, Monika recalled, she had experienced “slavery” in the form of long working hours, insufficient food and bad treatment.
“I worked from 6am until 10 or 11pm … my breakfast and dinner was a small zeit and zaatar [olive oil and thyme mix] roll. I was not allowed to eat from their [family] food… cheese was only for them and my lunch was just the leftovers of the cooked meal. They brought me to replace a Bangladeshi maid, who told me that I must steal food to live, but I would never do such a thing.”
Monika said she lost weight, suffered anemia and ulcer after five months of work.
more:
http://jordantimes.com/news/local/domestic-worker-says-she-experienced-slavery%E2%80%99-her-employer
Categories: Arab World, Asia, Jordan
A sad topic. When I was in Jordan I tried – not very successfully – to do something about this. A similar problem exists in all countries where domestic workers are engaged. Muslims should remember that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him) said that we should pay the wages of a worker ‘before the sweat is dry’. Also we should feed him with what we eat ourselves. Unfortunately hell will be full with such employers as described here. – Once we started a project interviewing domestic workers and were discouraged by the Jordanian Government. Once I appealed to the Americans who were investigating ‘human trafficking’ to look at the much larger problem of domestic workers, they were not interested to get involved. Individually we helped some, returning for instance a blind domestic worker who was ‘abandoned’ (instead of given a return ticket home). Ah well, hopefully my successors can be more successful in this. (Remember: the International Organizations can only do what someone pays them to do).