A Bangladeshi woman who went to Qatar to work as a maid has returned home with severe injuries all over her body after she was allegedly beaten up by employees of an employment agency in the Gulf Arab nation.
Kulsum Aktar Sathi, 35, said she was kept confined in a house for about a week and beaten up mercilessly after she went to complain about her job situation to Al Haramain Manpower Agency in the Qatari capital, Doha.
“I went to Qatar in the first week of July with the help of a middleman and a recruiting agency (in Dhaka) to work as a housemaid,” said Sathi, while talking to the Dhaka Tribune yesterday upon her release from the One Stop Crisis Centre at Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH).
“They told me that I would work for a small family and take care of only one child. But in reality, I had to look after five children,” said Sathi, who is from Chawkbazar in Old Dhaka.
“But that was not the main issue. I quarrelled with my employer when he paid me Tk16,000, instead of Tk19,500 a month,” Sathi said.
She also alleged that her employer’s brother-in law had tried to seduce her.
“One day, he grasped me with an ill-motive and I slapped him,” Sathi said. “I shared the matter with my husband, and he advised me to return home.”
When she requested her employer to send her back home, he took her to the offices of Al Haramain Manpower Agency at Doha’s Al Ali market, Sathi said, showing this correspondent a visiting card with the agency’s name and address. However, there was no reply when the phone number on the card was called.
“I was given a mobile phone to talk to the recruiting agency in Bangladesh. While I was talking on the phone, I was given a hard slap and the mobile set fell from my hand and broke into pieces,” Sathi continued, describing how she was mistreated by the agency, apparently run by other Asians from Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
“They took away my own mobile phone and about Tk25,900 that I had on me,” she said.
Sathi claimed that between August 11-18, she was kept locked up in an agency house, where some women employees assaulted her.
“They kicked me and dragged me across the floor with my hair and threw me against walls. They also scratched me with sharp key rings,” she said, narrating her harrowing experience.
Sathi said her husband kept calling her employer, who compelled the manpower agency to return her home.
She, along with another badly beaten-up Bangladeshi woman, Asia Begum of Brahmanbaria, was finally put aboard a Dhaka-bound flight.
“We were taken in wheelchairs to board a Qatar Airlines plane,” Sathi said. “We landed at Shahajalal Airport on August 19.”
Sathi then contacted the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers’ Association (BNWLA), who took them to a safe home in the capital’s Agargaon area.
Two days later, the two women were admitted to the DMCH, where Asia is still undergoing treatment. She could not be reached immediately for comment.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Obhibasi Mohila Sramik Association, which works for the welfare of migrant female workers, said it would give Tk3,000 a month to each of the victims for six months, its founding director, Sumaiya Begum, said over phone.
Tahmina Nadira, a lawyer working with BNWLA, said they would provide legal assistance to lodge cases against the local agencies that recruited the women.
Sathi claimed that the agency had promised to get her a job in a garments factory or as a cleaner in a hospital.
“But just a day before the flight, I was told that I would have to work as a housemaid,” she said. “I was in a fix, as my husband had already paid them Tk35,000 as service fee. So, I was obliged to go.”
Sathi’s husband, Zahurul Haque, said he was forced to send his wife overseas to earn money after falling into serious debt.
“I had borrowed Tk250,000 to send my brother-in-law (Sathi’s brother) abroad,” said Zahurul, who comes from Faridpur and works in an office in the capital.
