Reform for domestics
Beirut – When Jane came from the Philippines to Lebanon as a domestic worker to cook, clean and care for children, she only met her new boss on the day she moved into her house – and she was unhappy from the outset.
Meanwhile Beirut resident Tina, expecting her first child, was looking to hire help at home but was worried about employing someone she had never met – as is usually the case in Lebanon, where foreign workers need a sponsor to come to the country.
Enter Leena Ksaifi, who runs Equip, the first non-government organisation in Lebanon to play matchmaker between employers and migrant domestic workers in a bid to tackle worker abuse and trafficking, and to ensure both bosses and workers are happy.
Ksaifi said she wanted to shake up traditional recruiting in Lebanon, where people go through agencies and rarely meet workers in person before hiring them under the kafala sponsorship system – which binds migrant workers to one employer.
Jane and Tina (not their real names) turned to Beirut-based Equip who matched them.
“I wanted to see her [the new employee], meet her, before I made a decision. At the end of the day this person is living in my house ... it is pretty intimate,” said Tina, who also wanted to avoid the large fees of hiring from overseas.
“I don’t want somebody to come here and be a slave,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at her Beirut home.
Jane needed a new sponsor after deciding not to move abroad with her previous employer’s family but wanted her next job to be a mutual agreement of salary, hours and time off.
“I wanted to meet the person face-to-face. Before, I could not ask for what I want,” she said, adding that her previous sponsorship felt like somebody owned her.
Equip was set up in late 2016 but started direct hiring about six months ago as the kafala system – which applies across the Arab world. This system has come under increasing scrutiny and criticism from human rights groups for exploiting workers and denying them the ability to travel or change jobs.
This has led to some nations reforming the system, with countries like Bahrain and Jordan introducing flexible visas. – Reuters