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Beirut: An Ethiopian housemaid lies bandaged in a government hospital after falling from a 12th floor balcony. She says her Lebanese employer pushed her off."Madam asked me to hang the clothes. Then she came and pushed me from behind," the 25-year-old woman said. Too frightened to let her name be published, she said her employer had frequently threatened and abused her."Madam would tell me, 'I will spill hot oil on you', so I hid the oil. She would take a knife and threaten to kill me. She would beat me with shoes, pull my hair to the floor," the injured woman said, her face still bruised a month later.According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), nearly every week one of an estimated 200,000 migrant domestic workers in Lebanon dies. Suicide, falling while trying to escape their employer and untreated illness are the main causes of death.The employers are rarely prosecuted.HRW says maids in Lebanon, as elsewhere in Asia, are vulnerable to beatings, rape and even murder for lack of national laws to protect them from abusive employers.Like fixtures
Live-in housemaids are like fixtures for well-off Lebanese families for years. They often do everything from heavy housework to nannying and helping with children's homework.Many get no days off, work for up to 18 hours and are locked indoors. Others leave the house only to shop or walk a dog. Employers, who routinely confiscate their passports to deter them from running away, promise to pay maids $150 (Dh550.5) to $250 a month depending on their nationalities. But many employers don't pay as agreed. Some verbally and physically abuse their workers.
They often deduct the first three month's wages to pay a fee to the agencies that import the maids."We've definitely seen a lot of cases where the employer would beat, slap [a worker] when she makes a 'mistake' - that could be breaking a plate, badly ironing a shirt or burning some food on the stove," added HRW senior researcher Nadim Houry.When domestic workers get into distress, they may ask their embassies to help, but staff are often overwhelmed. The Sri Lankan embassy, for example, has two people to handle some 80,000 Sri Lankan workers in Lebanon.
The issues are laid bare in a recent documentary, Maid in Lebanon II: Voices from Home, directed by Carol Mansour in coordination with the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The 40-minute film, narrated by a Lebanese woman awaiting the arrival of a maid from the Philippines, provides information about the rights and obligations of employers and workers, the full costs of hiring maids and how they should be treated."It's so obvious that there is a problem here," Mansour said at her office in Beirut's Hamra district. The ILO and other groups have helped set up a committee at the Labour Ministry to try to improve conditions for domestic workers.One proposal is to approve a standard contract stipulating the rights and obligations of employers and workers, and to add specific legal provisions to guarantee workers' rights.
Abdullah Razzouk, the head of the committee, said he expected the contract to be approved and the draft law sent to parliament "in the immediate future", provisionally in early 2009.Indrani, a 27-year-old Sri Lankan, lived for 18 months in a shelter run by the Christian charity group Caritas after running away from an abusive employer."I was paid the first year and a half. But then I wasn't paid for the next eight years. When I asked for money, Madam would swear at me, break glasses against the wall. She spoke to me like a donkey," she said recently at the shelter in Beirut. "I was only given some bread and rice to eat. Fruit was forbidden. I woke up at 9am and slept at 4:30 or 5 am. I was not allowed to speak to my parents. They thought I had died," she said, tears welling up.Indrani has since returned home.
As in the days of Noah....
