Our female expatriate workers continue to die

The statistics are astounding. It should have made the relevant agencies sit up and act. However, it seems that they are totally inured to such tragic incidents. It is not one or two or even 10, but nearly a hundred women expatriate workers, on average every year, that have died in the Middle East. To be exact, 473 women returned home dead from Middle East in around 5 years of which 175 died in Saudi Arabia. Of those, 51 committed suicide. Regrettably, 81 female migrant workers died by suicide in the last four years in different countries. And, between January and September of this year, bodies of at least 63 female workers were sent back home. Of them, 22 lost their lives in Saudi Arabia alone. In the recent instance, an underage girl named Nadi returned home, in a casket, having been sent as a domestic worker to Saudi Arabia, only this year. Apparently her documents showed that she was born in 1993 whereas, the record shows her year of birth as 2007. We want to ask whether the expatriate ministry has undertaken any study at all in the last five years to find out why and how so many women workers have died in Middle Eastern countries. The numbers are too many to be accepted as accidents or natural deaths. Has the administration ever felt any compulsion to inquire into why so many of them had chosen to end their own lives? Did the administration not feel the need to carry out its own post-mortem, of at least those alleged to have committed suicide, after their bodies were returned home? There are quite a few who, we feel, are responsible for the death of the unfortunate girl. First, while we admit that an overseas job may be too tempting to turn down for a low income family, should Nadis's family have allowed her to take employment abroad knowing that she was underage? Those who have issued the passport and verified her particulars are no less responsible for Nadi's death, and of course her employer, who cannot avoid responsibility. We have editorialised many times on this very grim and sensitive issue, and suggested repeatedly to formulate a new policy on sending women workers abroad and to exercise caution while selecting the candidates and the types of jobs that they are to be employed in. We had also suggested that till such time the situation improves, and we are able to ensure safety and physical security of the women migrant workers, their employment abroad should be embargoed. The ministry must immediately launch an inquiry into the deaths and determine the causative factors. If need be, the host countries should be asked to help in such inquiries to determine the facts. Neither our workers' labour nor do their lives come cheap. And it is for the government to uphold that.