Talks underway to repatriate detained Sri Lankan women
Sri Lankan authorities yesterday said that discussions are already underway between Sri Lankan authorities and the relevant authorities in Saudi Arabia to repatriate a group of Sri Lankan women, detained at a deportation centre in Saudi Arabia.
Amnesty International published an article titled “Saudi Arabia: Dozens of Sri Lankan women wrongfully detained for months due to abusive kafala system” and launched a campaign to release the Sri Lankan “Women Migrant Workers Detained for Months”.
“At least 41 Sri Lankan women, the majority of whom are migrant domestic workers, have spent months on end arbitrarily detained at a deportation centre in Saudi Arabia, awaiting repatriation to their home country”, it stated.
Speaking to Daily Mirror Charge d’affairs of the Embassy of Sri Lanka in Riyadh Madhuka Wickramarachchi said that there are 43 females currently being held in Riyadh Tarheel deportation centre and a similar number in the Sumeshi deportation centre in Jeddah. 80% of them are runaways, the rest have been apprehended by the Saudi Police for engaging in begging, violating Umah visa provisions and committing petty crimes.
“Although under-reported, there are around 70 men from Sri Lanka who are also kept in the male sections of these centres and almost all of them are runaways,” he said.
He also confirmed that some of the men and women are cleared by the Saudi authorities and issued exit visas to return to Sri Lanka, but unfortunately, Saudia airlines, on which the Saudi government deport these men and women to Sri Lanka, has not been in operation since March 2020.
“The Embassy and the Consulate General in Jeddah, have been holding discussions since last March with deportation centre authorities to find alternate methods, such as, using the Sri Lankan airlines to deport these Sri Lankans in small groups. much progress has been made in agreeing on the logistics of this operation.”
The Embassy and the Consulate General is confident that the first group could be repatriated by the end of this month, he said.
Runaway domestic workers are an unfortunate by-product of this Kafala (Sponsor) system.
However, the Saudi government is progressively addressing this issue and taking incremental steps to change the existing Kafala system, which has historical roots in the middle-east region, by introducing some alternative methods ,he added.