Work is torture for Sri Lanka maids

What makes Kusuma cry is not the memory of repeated assaults but the look on her children's faces when they saw her in hospital.

"After three months, I asked Madam for my salary and she started to beat me with iron bars and wooden sticks," the maid explains of her time in Saudi Arabia.

"Sometimes she would take a hot iron and burn me or heat up a knife and put it on my body."
Kusuma is still trying to understand why her employer treated her this way when she had not done anything wrong.

Kusuma says that one day her employer just tired of her. The employer said they were going to the police station and that Kusuma would be arrested.

Instead she just put her on a plane back to Sri Lanka, knowing she would never be prosecuted for torturing her.

Blacklisting

Sri Lankan Minister of Labour Mahinda Samarasinghe assures maids that the government "has been taking these issues up with the relevant authorities and they have been in the main responding positively".

However, labour activists say it is essential Sri Lanka operates a blacklisting system for rogue employers.

The minister says that will depend on the co-operation of the Saudi authorities, who have not yet agreed.

A recent survey by Colombo University found a quarter of Sri Lankan maids had suffered problems such as abuse or lack of payment while abroad.

The Bureau of Foreign Employment runs a counter at Colombo airport to help returning maids with problems.

It says on average 50 a day come back in distress.

Lebanon does operate a blacklist system for bad employers, but that did not help 41-year-old Soma, who recalls repeated rapes by the 18-year-old son of her female employer.

"When I went to his bedroom he closed the door and removed my clothes and his. When I tried to resist he threatened to kill me," she says.

 Soma says she begged him to spare her on the grounds that she had a son his age.

"Another day, his four friends came to the house. When I took tea to the room they closed the door and kept me on their laps and started to touch my body and abuse me," she says in tears. All the men then raped her.

There was little comfort from Soma's employer, who seemed to think she had employed a prostitute for her son rather than a cleaner for her house.

"I complained to his mother and she just said, 'I will give you pills to make sure you don't get pregnant' and she beat me."

Soma eventually escaped from the flat and walked for four hours until she met by chance a Sri Lankan couple who took her home, fed her and took her to the embassy.

Although the rapes were reported to the embassy and police, Soma was just put on a plane home. Nothing happened to her rapists.

Training efforts

"We are not in a position to say, 'Look here, ensure that all of these things are in place otherwise we will not send our people'," says Minister Samarasinghe about the need for better insurance and health cover if something does go wrong.

Migrant workers make up the largest net foreign exchange earner for Sri Lanka and the country has a huge unemployment problem, so it often cannot dictate terms to richer nations.

Training the maids about what to expect is a key issue.

"If a person is trained at the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, I don't see that person will have a problem," says Shoaib Abdeen, who runs the Mount Lavinia school for maids.

The government says all women going to Arabic countries have to take basic language courses and learn cooking.
Those going to the more lucrative markets of Singapore, Hong Kong and Cyprus get extra classes like map reading.

The maids are advised not to run away from their employer if they encounter problems but maintain a positive attitude.
Given the high failure rate of women workers overseas, it might be better to teach an escape plan should the need arise.

For legal reasons Kusuma and Soma are not the maids' real names (BBC)

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Sri Lankan maid returns from Saudi with 24 nails inside body

A Sri Lankan housemaid has returned home from Saudi Arabia with 24 nails embedded in her body after allegedly being tortured by her employer, officials said Wednesday.

A government minister said police were investigating a complaint from L. T. Ariyawathi, 49, that her Saudi employer tortured her and drove nails into her body as punishment.

"We are conducting an investigation and we will coordinate with Saudi authorities to have the suspects arrested," Economic Development Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena told reporters.

The woman travelled to Saudi Arabia in March and returned home last week, complaining of abuse by her employer.

Abeywardena said doctors who examined the woman found the nails inside her body and she was currently being treated at a local hospital.

Some of the nails are about two inches (five centimetres) long, according to pictures of the X-rays published in the local press, and were driven beneath the skin of Ariyawathi's hands, feet and legs.

According to Sri Lanka's Foreign Employment Bureau, around 1.8 million Sri Lankans are employed abroad, of whom 70 percent are women.

Most are employed as housemaids in the Middle East, while smaller numbers work in Singapore and Hong Kong.
Complaints of harassment are made regularly and the government has made it compulsory for migrant workers to register with local authorities, to ensure they can be provided with consular services if they encounter problems. (Ends/)

சவூதி அரேபியாவில் கடமையாற்றிய இலங்கை பணிப்பெண் ஒருவரின் உடம்பில் ஆணி அடித்து சித்திரவதை

சவூதி அரேபியாவில் கடமையாற்றிய பணிப்பெண் ஒருவரின் உடம்பில் ஆணி அடித்து மோசமான சித்திரவதையினால் படுகாயமடைந்த நிலையில் அப்பெண் இலங்கை வந்துள்ளார்.

அப்பெண்ணின் உடலில் 23 ஆணிகள் இருந்ததாக வைத்தியசாலை வட்டாரங்கள் தெரிவித்தன.

தனக்கு உறங்குவதற்கு கூட இடமளிக்கப்படாது சதாவும் வேலை வாங்கி கொடுமைப்படுத்தியதாகவும், குறித்த வீடடின் எஜமான் இரும்பு ஆணிகளை சூடாக்கி தனது உடலில் அடித்ததாகவும் அப்பெண் தெரிவித்துள்ளார். (Ends/)

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£300m earthquake aid 'misused by Zardari’ of Pakistan

More than £300 million in foreign aid for victims of the 2005 Pakistan earthquake has been diverted by President Asif Zardari's government to other causes, officials have told The Daily Telegraph.

They now fear that the alleged diversion of funds will deter donors from giving further aid after the country's devastating floods.
According to senior officials, schools, hospitals, houses and roads planned with money given by foreign governments and international aid groups remain unbuilt almost five years after the earthquake which killed 80,000 and left four million people homeless. arts in flooded Pakistan.

International donors gave £3.5 billion to rebuild vast swaths of Pakistan's Kashmir and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces after the earthquake destroyed the region's infrastructure.

However, senior Pakistani officials yesterday said more than £300 million given in aid has yet to be handed over to the country's Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA).

Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's opposition leader, last night said suspicion among potential donors was hampering the fund-raising effort to help more than 14 million people displaced by the floods which have swept away buildings, bridges and roads in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Punjab provinces.

"There's reluctance, even people in this country are not giving generously into this flood fund because they're not too sure the money will be spent honestly," he told The Daily Telegraph.

Mr Zardari has already been criticised for his handing of the floods after failing to cancel his foreign trip, which included a meeting with David Cameron at Chequers, despite scale of the disaster. So far 14 million people need help and 1,600 have died, making it the world's worst humanitarian disaster, according to the UN.

Mr Zardari has now failed to cancel a trip to Russia next week but has scaled it down from a two-day visit to a one-day visit.

Earthquake reconstruction directors were first told their budgets were being cut in March 2009 when 12 billion Pakistan Rupees (£90 million) was diverted from their budget to other government projects. They were told: "When we have the money we will pay you," said one senior official. "All the money was given by Western governments, but they said 'we have so many other problems,'" he added.
In June this year, ERRA staff were told their 2010-2011 budget of 43 billion Pakistan Rupees (£322 million) had been but down to just 10 billion Rupees (£75 million).

In Balakot, where 5,000 of the town's 25,000 people were killed in the earthquake, thousands of families were told their entire town would be rebuilt six miles away because it stood directly in the 'red zone' directly above the fault line.

But despite promises that the new town would be completed by last month, not a single new road has been completed nor a building construction begun on the site of "New Balakot". When the Telegraph visited the "new town" this week mechanical diggers stood rusting and security guards said there had been no work on the site for more than a year. Officials said contractors had not been paid since April and were still owed £22.5 million. Kamal Nawaz,30, of Gairlat Village, where families of 14 are living in tiny two room temporary huts, said:"they told us they could build three new Balakots but we're still waiting for one." A minute of an ERRA meeting to discuss the funding crisis earlier this month decided there would be "no further work on all on-going projects," while an internal letter dated August 6th explained that as a result of the "rationalization exercise" several offices would have to be closed and assets auctioned. Plans have also been made to cut its 3000 staff down to 800.

Officials said as all the earthquake reconstruction projects had been identified and budgeted for with funds donated by foreign governments and aid agencies, there was no justification for the cuts.
Pakistan's finance secretary Salman Siddiq said the government had rejected requests for extra funds because of the country's fiscal deficit but denied any foreign aid funds had been diverted. "No cuts were imposed last year," he said. (The Daily Telegraph/)

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Most Islamist terrorists in UK are born here

The majority of Islamist terrorists in the UK are British-born, under the age of 30, educated and likely to be employed, according to a statistical analysis of all terror plots uncovered over the past ten years.

The Centre for Social Cohesion has spent two years compiling a database of individuals convicted of Islamist-inspired terrorism offences over the past decade.

The report, released today, comes as Britain prepares to mark the fifth anniversary of the July 7, 2005 bombings, the most deadly terrorist attack on UK soil. Despite the ongoing threat posed by terrorism, there is still no government database listing basic information on convictions in the UK.

Researchers at the Centre for Social Cohesion had to dig up court and press reports to compile the database, which reveals that between 1999 and 2009, 119 individuals – British and foreign nationals – were convicted of "Islamism inspired terrorism offences". The Government's lack of data on such offences was heavily criticised last year by the Intelligence and Security Committee inquiry into the 7/7 London bombings. "This is basic information that should have been being analysed to assess how well aspects of the [anti-terror] strategy were working and what changes needed to be made – particularly in terms of legislation," the committee said.

The Centre for Social Cohesion, a Westminster-based think tank with just six staff members, began working on the list two years ago and went on to compile the most comprehensive database of such convictions in the public domain. Houriya Ahmed, one of the report's authors, said yesterday: "The information in this report has not been made publicly available by the Government, if it exists at all. We hope that the trends we discovered help focus the Government's counter-terrorism efforts and this should be acted upon by the relevant authorities."

The Centre's researchers discovered 127 individual convictions for terror offences, which includes three of the 119 who were convicted twice of an offence, the four July 7 suicide bombers and Kafeel Ahmed, who killed himself during the unsuccessful bombing of Glasgow airport.

The average age of perpetrators was 27, with the youngest 16 and the oldest 48. Only five women have been convicted of terror-related offences – for assisting offenders or for possessing illegal documents. A third (32 per cent) of those convicted had direct links to a proscribed organisation, with the two most prevalent being the recently banned al-Muhajiroun (15 per cent) and al Qa'ida (14.5 per cent).

Almost half (48 per cent) of those convicted lived in the London area. Birmingham and West Yorkshire have the second- and third-highest numbers of convictions.

More than two thirds (69 per cent) of those convicted were born in the UK and held British passports. (Ends/)

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