Ugandan Women Pay the Price of Exploitation
Activists warn that vulnerable domestic workers risk abuse, often returning with serious health conditions.
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In April 2021, 30-year-old Fridah Nakawooya embarked on a journey from Uganda to Saudi Arabia that she hoped would transform her life and fortunes.
The single mother-of-three had signed a two-year contract with Bizaart Labour Consultants Limited to work as a domestic servant for a family-of-five for a monthly wage of 900,000 Ugandan shillings (243 US dollars).
When her contract expired in April 2023, Nakawooya directly extended her tenure for an additional year. But then her family lost touch with her.
By August, her older sister Shadia Nabulya was desperately worried. Nakawooya’s phone appeared to have been cut off, and although Nabulya managed to trace and contact the employer, she was unable to find out how her sister was.
Then in September, Nabulya received a WhatsApp message from Nakawooya’s employer with pictures of an unidentifiable person in hospital on life support.
“My heart sunk,” Nabulya told IWPR. “I asked him who the person was because the face was covered and he didn’t answer any of my questions. Two weeks later a message followed, instructing me to tell Fridah's next of kin to apply for a Saudi visa to retrieve her. [I was told] her condition was a result of an accident.”
Bizaart Labour Consultants Ltd told Nabulya that their contractual obligation had ended months earlier. As the family struggled to put together the required funds, the employer announced that he was sending Nakawooya back to Uganda. On October 7th 2023, Nakawooya arrived at Entebbe International Airport on an Ethiopian Airlines flight.
Semi-paralysed, Nakawooya was unable to speak, with a head wound and extensive swelling.
“I looked at my sister, being supported to walk, and I sobbed,” Nabulya continued. “I called her and she couldn’t respond. I then noticed, she had a deep cut on the head and the whole body was swollen. Fridah couldn’t say anything.”
Nakawooya was subsequently hospitalised and doctors discovered an unexplained incision to her left lower abdomen. Two months later, she remains largely unresponsive and cannot recognise her children aged four, six and eight or walk unaided.
Nakawooya is among many Ugandan women with little or no education who travel to the Gulf states as domestic workers, a situation which campaigners warn leaves them vulnerable to abuse. And human rights activists have highlighted numerous cases in which migrants return with serious health problems.
“I am not a medical doctor but in my lay capacity, there is no way an accident can only affect the head and the abdomen in the manner it has,” Nabulya said. “If really it was an accident, why did they hide everything from us? Fridah was always indoors, she was never allowed to go out, so what changed that day?”
The family is raising funds for a comprehensive medical examination to determine exactly what happened to Nakawooya. They have unsuccessfully appealed to Bizaart and government officials for help, and are currently being assisted by the Kyeyo Initiative, an NGO supporting migrant workers.
MIGRANT ECONOMY
Statistics from Uganda’s ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development indicates that 2,000 citizens leave the country for domestic work in the Middle East each month, with the majority, like Nakawooya, heading to Saudi Arabia.
Approximately 300 licensed companies facilitate labour migration from Uganda, contributing significantly to the nation's economy. These companies have been frequently criticised by labour rights campaigners for prioritising profit over safety and often neglecting their responsibilities towards workers once they arrive in the Gulf. As a result, in recent years the government has suspended the licenses of several of these companies, while others remain under scrutiny for facilitating abuse.
Most migrants are women, often single mothers unaware of contractual obligations and their employment rights, drawn by the opportunity to earn a monthly wage of between 900,000 shs (237 dollars) and 1.2M (316 dollars) – three times higher than what a skilled Ugandan worker could expect to earn. According to the 2021 National Labour Force report, 60 per cent of Ugandans earn 200,000 shs (54 dollars) per month.
Remittances from the labour force in the Middle East reached 1.2 billion dollars by December 2022, with 796 million dollars from Saudi Arabia alone. But Ugandan low-skilled workers in the Gulf and wider Middle East rely on the kafala system, a process which requires migrants to have sponsors before acquiring a work permits. This gives the employers widespread powers over their work, legal and financial status.
Although Uganda passed a raft of legislation relating to labour externalisation in 2010, with agreements renewed in 2023, abuse persists.
Mariam Mwiza, a migrant labour activist, said that the current situation was unacceptably exploitative.
“This is nothing like labour migration. This is modern slavery. Almost every day, I register a complaint of a Ugandan woman complaining about her rights being abused. The system in the Middle East empowers employers to do so.”
Mariam called on the Ugandan government to establish rehabilitation and training centres to enable returnees from the Middle East to support themselves.
Such a resource could have proved invaluable to Sharon Kusasiras, a 26-year-old mother-of-two who travelled to Jordan for a promised job in a supermarket. Instead, she was forced to earn her living as a housemaid in unsafe working conditions. Denied protective gear or medical attention, her hands soon became chronically swollen and partially paralysed by the harsh detergents and chemicals she had to use during her work.
A further period of time working in Saudi Arabia only exacerbated her condition, causing irreversible damage to her hands caused by harsh cleaning chemicals. When she returned to Uganda, Kusasira had been so badly affected that she had to have a finger amputated on her right hand.
Kusasira now works in a local saloon and said that her self-esteem had been shattered.
“When my children saw my hands when I returned, they all broke down and cried and asked why I went to work. I can’t traumatize them anymore,” she continued, adding that she now regretted seeking work abroad and urged all others to not pursue domestic work in the Gulf.
PATTERN OF ABUSE
Some warn of even more sinister human rights abuses, including organ trafficking.
In 2021, Judith Nakintu, another Ugandan migrant worker, returned home in a serious condition after a year spent working in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Medical examinations at Mulago National referral hospital revealed that the 38-year-old’s right kidney had been removed and that she had suffered other injuries including pelvic fractures and bruising to her liver.
Nakintu lodged criminal and civil suits before the high court’s international crimes division in Kololo, Kampala, against Nile Treasure Gate, the company that brokered her migration to Saudi Arabia, and her employer Saad Dhafer Mohammed Al-Asmari. The government suspended Nile Treasure Gate operations and five employees were arrested and charged with aggravated trafficking in human organs. In February 2023, they were granted bail, and the case has yet to be scheduled for hearing.
Abdallah Kayonde, the president of the Migrant Worker’s Voice NGO which has supported Nakintu and her family, said that they had faced multiple obstacles in pushing for justice.
“This case was a syndicate involving highly connected people. People are compromised. Police had declined to arrest them until we involved the Special Forces Command [the presidential force]” he said.
However, Stuart Oramire, the executive director of the Uganda Association of External Recruitment Agencies (UAERA), defended the effectiveness of labour protection structures, attributing any problems to “runaways”.
“We have many migrant workers who go through the right channels but later run away from employment,” he continued. “These people become aliens in the foreign countries but when they want to return, we always help them.”
But Mwiza argued that officials had so far failed to advocate effectively for better deals and that Kampala needed to overhaul the entire system.
“The contracts are signed in Arabic,” she noted. “These are illiterate or semi-illiterate desperate women seeking for a life. It’s the duty of government to protect and negotiate better conditions for them.”
While bilateral treaties between Uganda and Saudi Arabia give migrant workers a measure of protection – most recently, in February 2023, when the agreements were reviewed to ensure oversight if contractual obligations were violated - similar agreements with Oman, Jordan, and the UAE often fail to be enforced.
Sharon Kemigisa, 31, is a former migrant worker who documented her plight in a memoir entitled The Beast in the East. Assaulted and injured during her time in Oman in 2017, Kemigisa said that she had had two miscarriages as a result of the abuse she suffered.
“These are not human beings, they are beasts,” she said of employers who exploited their foreign workers. “No human can make another go through what they put us through. We keep a lot to ourselves just to protect our children but our souls are bleeding. To me, they are beasts.”
The Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.
