As many as 32 Bangladeshi women who worked as domestic help in Saudi Arabia returned home on Thursday, after facing barbaric torture at the hands of their employers.
They had arrived on a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight SV804, at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka from Riyadh at 9:20pm.
The information was confirmed by an official at the Expatriates’ Welfare Desk at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.
“After being tortured by their employers, they took shelter at the immigration camps in Saudi Arabia and a safe home which is run by the Bangladesh Embassy there.”
The return of female workers from Saudi Arabia has been a regular trend in the past several years for several reasons—including sexual abuse, physical torture and wage related irregularities—according to the officials concerned.
So far, at least 200 housemaids returned home from Saudi Arabia this month alone, while 182 others came back in January, according to Brac.
More than 1,500 women returned from Saudi Arabia last year.
In 2015, the governments of Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia signed an agreement on sending female workers as domestic help.
Since then, the poverty-stricken women—mostly from rural areas in Bangladesh—flew to Saudi Arabia with hopes and dreams of improving their standards of living.
However, around 5,000 female Bangladeshi workers have returned from Saudi Arabia since 2015, due to reasons varying from torture to sexual abuse, and irregularities in the payment of their wages.
