Runaway maids returning under agreement
Nineteen Sri Lankan domestic workers, currently in a detention centre in Jordan after running away from their workplace, are being freed and returning home on Tuesday under an agreement between a legal aid group and the government.
Linda al-Kalash, director at Tamkeen, a Jordanian legal aid group, told the Sunday Times that the 19 workers, who have been in Jordan for up to five years, were leaving on Monday and would arrive in Colombo on Tuesday on a SriLankan Airlines flight.
“We are providing them air tickets and pocket money (for travel costs) to go to their homes from the Colombo airport under this repatriation programme,” she said in a telephone interview from the Jordanian capital of Amman on Saturday night.
“There are more Sri Lankan domestics at the centre, and we are working on their release and repatriation too,” she said, but was unable to give the exact number of Sri Lankans outside the 19 who are returning.
This development comes in the backdrop of a September 1 ruling by Jordanian recruitment agencies to stop hiring Sri Lankan domestics after the Sri Lankan government imposed a restrictive a non-refundable deposit of US$ 1,000 (Rs. 133,000) per job order to be paid by those agents to the Sri Lankan Mission in Amman, according to a Sunday Times report on September 2.
The Sri Lankan government rule came into force owing to low wage levels in Jordan and increasing problems faced by the embassy in Amman pertaining to domestic workers.
Embassy officials could not be reached for comment. Ms. al-Kalash said her information was that there were another 247 workers at the embassy shelter. “We have had discussions with the embassy and they are also trying to help (resolve these issues facing domestics),” she said.
“The women at the detention centre are not criminals. They (only) broke the residency law by running away from their sponsor for various reasons - maybe unpaid wages or harassment,” she said.
There are about 120 workers mostly from Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Indonesia currently under detention. There are just a few from Bangladesh, a country that opened recruitment of domestics to Jordan only in April this year.
Two of the returning workers have been given emergency travel documents by the embassy while the other 17 were given back their passports after Tamkeen negotiated an amnesty in lieu of the payment of overstay fines.
Tamkeen is providing air tickets and other support to a total of 134 workers of various nationalities under an agreement with the country's Public Security Department, with 31 being sent next week and another 21 in the following week.
“Sri Lankan workers are not properly advised about conditions and culture in Jordan by recruitment agencies. For example, it is very cold here and the women are not properly equipped to deal with the cold and find it hard to work,” Ms. alKalash said.
The repatriation programme began two months back. Ms. al-Kalash appealed to the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) to help with the repatriation of workers at the embassy shelter.