17 April 2021 12:03 am Views - 877
Sri Lankan authorities today said that discussions are already underway between the Sri Lankan authorities and the relevant officials in Saudi Arabia to bring down a group of Sri Lankan women, who are detained at a deportation centre in Saudi Arabia.
The Amnesty International (AI) published an article titled “Saudi Arabia: Dozens of Sri Lankan women wrongfully detained for months due to abusive kafala system” and initiated a campaign to release the Sri Lankan “Women Migrant Workers Detained for Months”. “At least 41 Sri Lankan women, majority of whom are migrant domestic aides, have spent months and arbitrarily detained at a deportation centre in Saudi Arabia awaiting repatriation to their home country”, it stated.
Speaking to the Daily Mirror, Charge d’Affairs of the Sri Lankan Embassy in Riyadh Madhuka Wickramarachchi said, there are 43 females currently being held in Tarheel Deportation Centre in Riyadh 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 too are kept in the male sections of these centres and almost all of them are runaways,” he also 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, the Saudia airlines, in which the Saudi government deport these men and women to Sri Lanka, was not operating since March 2020.
“The Embassy and the Consulate General in Jeddah, since last March was discussing with the 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. Runway 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. (Sunil Jayasiri)