A Kenyan woman is crying out from Saudi Arabia to be brought back home.
Elizabeth Sineno, in a 6:36-minute audio clip released on Tuesday, says hundreds of workers are stuck in labour offices at Sakaka City, Al Jawf, Saudi Arabia after their employers terminated their jobs.
Sineno, who is from Watamu, and another Kenyan woman she identifies only as Esther, have been camping at the labour offices for a year, seeking to be brought home.
They are part of a growing list of Kenyans trafficked for labour elsewhere.
Other victims of job offers gone sour at the labour camps include Ugandans and Burundians.
“We have suffered many sicknesses here without any medicine. We are pleading for help. Please share this clip to officials so that we can get help to come back home,” Sineno says in Kiswahili.
She says their efforts to get assistance from the Kenyan embassy have been fruitless.
Sineno travelled to Saudi Arabia in 2014 and worked for her first male employer for three months before she was sold to a woman for whom she worked for four years.
Her ordeal began when her boss summarily dismissed her without explanation and dumped her at Tabuk near Jordan-Saudi Arabia border. She was rescued by police and taken to Sakaka.
Hundreds of Kenyan labourers have been duped by recruitment agencies to migrate to the Middle East for greener pastures. Some return home in coffins, and regrets.
US Department's Trafficking in Persons Report 2018 noted that Kenya continues to host illegal recruiters, who maintain networks in Uganda and Ethiopia. They recruit Rwandans, Ethiopians and Ugandans fraudulently for employment in the Middle East and Asia.
The Kenyan Coast remains a major hotspot for human trafficking, one of the world’s most serious transnational crimes.
Edited by R.Wamochie
