Probe sought into agents' role in maid racket in Bahrain

HYDERABAD: Claiming that there is a big racket between agents in Andhra Pradesh and Bahrain in sending women to the gulf nation as domestic helps, the AP Women's Commission (APWC) wants the AP Police to probe the racket.
"Women, particularly from AP, are taken to Bahrain as domestic helps by agents and subjecting them to inhuman cruelty. Most of the women are taken on a tourist visa, which allows them to stay for 90 days.However, their visa gets extended after that and they continue to suffer. As per the information I have, at least 100 women from Nellore and its surrounding areas have been taken to Bahrain and are silently suffering there," AP Women's Commission chairperson Tripurana Venkataratnam told STOI.
She wants the AP DGP to probe the link between agents in AP and their accomplices in Bahrain, and will be writing to the authorities soon seeking the probe.
"The AP government should have to take a call on banning women from AP going to Bahrain as domestic helps," she said.
The chairperson recalled the travails of Podili Anasuyamma, a 40-year-old woman from Somasila mandal of Nellore district, who recently managed to escape 20 months of torture in Bahrain, where she went to work as a domestic worker to make money to support her family.
Unable to stay there because of the torture, she managed to contact her family members, who paid up some money to the contacts of the agents there following which her passport was handed over to her and she could return to India.
Anasuyamma told STOI: "I was forced to work for up to 20 hours a day, taking care of around 14 to 15 children of one family. The employers never gave me food and I was forced to eat from the waste thrown in dustbins. In a matter of 18 months, I was taken by the agent to work in 13 households. They did not pay me salary and when I asked for it, they would say that they have paid the agents lakhs of rupees."
After returning to Nellore, Anasuyamma approached the AP women's commission seeking relief. According to her, there are scores of women from AP who are employed as domestic helps in Bahrain, all of whom are living in hell.
Anasuyamma recalls how the other maids from the state she encountered in Bahrain had several horrible tales to recount including of sexual exploitation.