logo
Why Maids Keep Dying in Saudi Arabia

Why Maids Keep Dying in Saudi Arabia

New York Times16-03-2025

Feith Shimila Murunga says her boss groped, beat and raped her.
Mary Wanjiru Nyambura says she was thrown from a balcony.
Winfridah Kwamboka never even made it back home.
Why Maids Keep Dying in Saudi Arabia
On any given day in Kenya, dozens, if not hundreds of women buzz around the Nairobi international airport's departures area. They huddle for selfies in matching T-shirts, discussing how they'll spend the money from their new jobs in Saudi Arabia.
Lured by company recruiters and encouraged by Kenya's government, the women have reason for optimism. Spend two years in Saudi Arabia as a housekeeper or nanny, the pitch goes, and you can earn enough to build a house, educate your children and save for the future.
While the departure terminal hums with anticipation, the arrivals area is where hope meets grim reality. Hollow-cheeked women return, often ground down by unpaid wages, beatings, starvation and sexual assault. Some are broke. Others are in coffins.
At least 274 Kenyan workers, mostly women, have died in Saudi Arabia in the past five years — an extraordinary figure for a young work force doing jobs that, in most countries, are considered extremely safe. At least 55 Kenyan workers died last year, twice as many as the previous year.
Autopsy reports are vague and contradictory. They describe women with evidence of trauma, including burns and electric shocks, all labeled natural deaths. One woman's cause of death was simply 'brain dead.' An untold number of Ugandans have died, too, but their government releases no data.
There are people who are supposed to protect these women — government officials like Fabian Kyule Muli, vice chairman of the labor committee in Kenya's National Assembly. The powerful committee could demand thorough investigations into worker deaths, pressure the government to negotiate better protections from Saudi Arabia or pass laws limiting migration until reforms are enacted.
But Mr. Muli, like other East African officials, also owns a staffing company that sends women to Saudi Arabia. One of them, Margaret Mutheu Mueni, said that her Saudi boss had seized her passport, declared that he had 'bought' her and frequently withheld food. When she called the staffing agency for help, she said, a company representative told her, 'You can swim across the Red Sea and get yourself back to Kenya.'
In Kenya, Uganda and Saudi Arabia, a New York Times investigation found, powerful people have incentives to keep the flow of workers moving, despite widespread abuse. Members of the Saudi royal family are major investors in agencies that place domestic workers. Politicians and their relatives in Uganda and Kenya own staffing agencies, too.
The line between their public and private roles sometimes blurs.
Mr. Muli's labor committee, for example, has become a prominent voice encouraging workers to go overseas. The committee has at times rejected evidence of abuse.
Last month, four Ugandan women in maids' uniforms sent a video plea to an aid group, saying that they had been detained for six months in Saudi Arabia.
'We are exhausted from being held against our will,' one woman said on the video. The company that sent her abroad is owned by Sedrack Nzaire, an official with Uganda's governing party who is identified in Ugandan media as the brother of the president, Yoweri Museveni.
Nearly every staffing agency refused to answer questions or ignored repeated requests for comment. That includes Mr. Muli, Mr. Nzaire and their companies.
Kenya and Uganda are deep in a yearslong economic slump, and remittances from foreign workers are a significant source of income. Even after other countries negotiated deals with Saudi Arabia that guaranteed worker protections, East African countries missed opportunities to do the same, records show.
Kenya's Commission on Administrative Justice declared in 2022 that worker-protection efforts had been hindered by 'interference by politicians who use proxies to operate the agencies.'
Undeterred, Kenya's president, William Ruto, says he wants to send up to half a million workers to Saudi Arabia in the coming years. One of his top advisers, Moses Kuria, has owned a staffing agency. Mr. Kuria's brother, a county-level politician, still does.
A spokesman for Mr. Ruto, Hussein Mohamed, said that labor migration benefited the economy. He said the government was taking steps to protect workers, including weeding out unlicensed recruiting firms that are more likely to have shoddy practices. He said that Mr. Kuria, the presidential adviser, had no conflict of interest because he does not work on labor issues.
In Uganda, recruiting-firm owners include a recently retired senior police official and Maj. Gen. Leopold Kyanda, a former military attaché to the United States.
Recruiting companies work closely with Saudi agencies that are similarly well connected. Descendants of King Faisal have been among the largest shareholders in two of the biggest agencies. A director of a Saudi government human rights board serves as vice chairman of a major staffing agency. So does a former interior minister, an Investment Ministry official and several government advisers.
Together, these agencies paint a rosy picture of work in Saudi Arabia. But when things go wrong, families say, the workers are often left to fend for themselves.
A Kenyan housekeeper, Eunice Achieng, called home in a panic in 2022, saying that her boss had threatened to kill her and throw her in a water tank. 'She was screaming, 'Please come save me!'' her mother recalled. Ms. Achieng soon turned up dead in a rooftop water tank, her mother said. Saudi health officials said her body was too decomposed to determine how she died. The Saudi police labeled it a 'natural death.'
One young mother jumped from a third-story roof to escape an abusive employer, breaking her back. Another said that her boss had raped her and then sent her home pregnant and broke.
In Uganda, Isiko Moses Waiswa said that when he learned his wife had died in Saudi Arabia, her employer there gave him a choice: her body or her $2,800 in wages.
'I told him that whether you send me the money or you don't send me the money, me, I want the body of my wife,' Mr. Waiswa said.
A Saudi autopsy found that his wife, Aisha Meeme, was emaciated. She had extensive bruising, three broken ribs and what appeared to be severe electrocution burns on her ear, hand and feet. The Saudi authorities declared that she had died of natural causes.
Roughly half a million Kenyan and Ugandan workers are in Saudi Arabia today, the Saudi government says. Most of them are women who cook, clean or care for children. Journalists and rights groups, who have long publicized worker abuse in the kingdom, have often blamed its persistence on archaic Saudi labor laws.
The Times interviewed more than 90 workers and family members of those who died, and uncovered another reason that things do not change. Using employment contracts, medical files and autopsies, reporters linked deaths and injuries to staffing agencies and the people who run them. What became clear was that powerful people profit off the system as it exists.
The interviews and documents reveal a system that treats women like household goods — bought, sold and discarded. Some company websites have an 'add to cart' button next to photos of workers. One advertises 'Kenyan maids for sale.'
A spokesman for the human resources ministry in Saudi Arabia said it had taken steps to protect workers. 'Any form of exploitation or abuse of domestic workers is entirely unacceptable, and allegations of such behavior are thoroughly investigated,' the spokesman, Mike Goldstein, wrote in an email.
He said the government had raised fines for abuse and made it easier for workers to quit. He said domestic laborers were capped at 10-hour workdays and were guaranteed one day off per week. He said the government now requires employers to pay their maids through an online system and will one day track people who repeatedly violate labor laws.
'Workers have multiple ways to report abuse, unpaid wages or contract violations, including hotlines, digital platforms and direct complaint mechanisms,' he said.
But Milton Turyasiima, an assistant commissioner with the Ugandan Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development, said that abuse remained rampant.
'We get complaints on a daily basis,' he said.
Selling a Dream
Recruiters fan out across East Africa, from impoverished hilltop villages to the cinder block neighborhoods of Nairobi and Kampala, the Ugandan capital.
They search for people desperate, and ambitious, enough to leave their families for low-paying jobs in a country where they do not know the native language. People like Faridah Nassanga, a slim woman with a warm but detached air.
'We are really poor,' Ms. Nassanga said, sitting outside her one-room concrete home in Kampala. Meals are cooked on a propane burner in the alley beside a trickling sewage gutter. She shares a triple-decker bunk bed with her mother and children.
Ms. Nassanga said a friend introduced her in 2019 to an agent from Marphie International Recruitment Agency, whose co-owner, Henry Tukahirwa, recently retired as one of Uganda's highest-ranking police officers. Ms. Nassanga agreed to move to Saudi Arabia for a job paying about $200 a month.
She found her housekeeping job as pleasant as recruiters had promised. She had her own room. The woman she worked for sometimes even helped with chores.
Then one day, she said, her boss's husband walked into her room and raped her. Afterward, she said, he kicked and slapped her. He threw her underwear at her as she retreated to the kitchen, Ms. Nassanga said.
When she became pregnant, Ms. Nassanga's boss accused her of sleeping with the husband. The Saudi family put her on a plane back to Uganda, said Abdallah Kayonde, who runs a legal-aid group that is trying to get compensation for her.
Ms. Nassanga knows her employer's name but not her phone number. The only records she has are from the recruiting agency.
Ruth Karungi, who owns the agency with her husband, the retired police official, said that when Ms. Nassanga showed up at the office with an infant, the company contacted the Saudi partner agency, which did not respond.
The company then notified the Saudi Embassy. 'We trusted that they would address the case through the proper diplomatic channels,' Ms. Karungi said by email.
She said she did not know if anyone had followed up.
Now, Ms. Nassanga is back sharing a one-room home with her mother, her two older children and her toddler — a boy with a notably different complexion and hair from his siblings.
'An Important Destination Country'
Saudi Arabia has a wage hierarchy for foreign workers, with East Africans near the bottom at about $200 to $250 a month.
Over the years, some countries have fought for better wages and protections for their workers. The Philippines, for example, negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia in 2012 that raised wages.
That sent staffing agencies looking for cheaper labor elsewhere.
Few Ugandan workers arrived in the kingdom in 2017, Ugandan government data show. Five years later, the number was 85,928.
African governments stood to benefit from remittances. Mr. Muli's committee called on Kenya in 2019 to 'embark on a rigorous campaign to market Saudi Arabia as an important destination country for foreign employment.'
'The current notion that foreign workers in Saudi Arabia go through suffering' needed 'to be corrected,' the committee added.
Mwanakombo Ngao was hospitalized in a mental institution after returning home. She has no recollection of what happened in Saudi Arabia.
Esther Kerubo Moranga said her Saudi boss abused her. Now, she says, her uncle beats her for returning home without money.
Josephine Uchi says she worked a demanding housekeeping job while also caring for a Saudi family of 12. She was allowed four hours of sleep a night.
The African countries provide a 'new and lower-cost services market,' one of Saudi Arabia's largest staffing agencies, Maharah Human Resources Company, wrote in 2019.
Some of King Faisal's descendants, through a holding company, have been important shareholders in both Maharah and in another major staffing agency, Saudi Manpower Solutions Company, or Smasco.
Al Mawarid, yet another big staffing company, also has deep government ties. Its chairman, Ahmad al-Rakban, was executive director of administration for the Saudi National Guard. The chief executive, Riyadh al-Romaizan, is chairman of a government-backed industry council. Tariq al-Awaji, a former top official at the Interior Ministry, is a company director. Another board member, until recently, was an official in the Investment Ministry.
In recent years, Al Mawarid has paid about $4 million to acquire workers from Macro Manpower, the firm owned by Mr. Nzaire, the brother of Uganda's president, corporate filings show.
(East African recruiting agencies make money from per-worker fees from Saudi companies. Those companies, in turn, get fees from people who hire maids.)
Al Mawarid's chief executive, Mr. al-Romaizan, declined to answer questions.
Attacked With Bleach
Mary Nsiimenta, a single mother with big, mournful eyes, cleaned house for a family with five children in Najran, in southern Saudi Arabia. She said the children, ages 9 to 18, hit her with a stick and put bleach in her eyes.
(Several women told The Times that they were assaulted with bleach or forced to soak their hands in it as punishment.)
According to Ms. Nsiimenta, her employer was stingy with her salary. After she repeatedly asked to be paid, she said, the family locked her on a third-story rooftop.
As time dragged on, she felt sure she would die there, she recalled.
'The sun was too much,' she said. 'Hot. No food. I lost control.'
She jumped, landing hard.
'I crawled out like a snake' to the street, she said. Passers-by brought her to a hospital where, medical records show, doctors repaired her spine. She reported the abuse to doctors and the police, she said, but they told her to return to work.
Ms. Nsiimenta refused, and the Saudi placement agency returned her to Uganda in 2023. In chronic pain and incontinent, she cannot work. Friends and relatives are raising her children. 'My life is destroyed,' she said.
Trading Abuse for a Type of Prison
Saudi law says that, when a worker needs to go home, an employer, recruiter or the Saudi government is obligated to pay.
'Under no circumstances does a worker bear any financial responsibility for repatriation,' wrote Mr. Goldstein, the Saudi ministry spokesman.
But workers and worker-rights advocates say that laborers are often forced to pay. Those without money can be detained.
Because visas are tied to employment, workers who leave their jobs can lose their legal status. To help address that, the Saudi government paid a company, Sakan, to provide housing and legal assistance to foreign workers in trouble.
Hannah Njeri Miriam ended up at a Sakan center in 2022, about a year after she left Kenya's Rift Valley for Saudi Arabia.
Ms. Miriam's employer fired her after a dispute. Jobless and homeless, Sakan was the only place to go. Once there, according to her family, the staff said she could leave only if she paid about $300 for her travel.
She called home, saying she was being mistreated and underfed. Nobody could afford to help. The Kenyan agency that had sent her abroad had gone out of business.
Finally, her family got a call from another woman at the center. She said Ms. Miriam had tried to escape through an air-conditioning opening but had slipped and fallen two stories. A forensic report said that Ms. Miriam had died of head wounds. The Saudi police later said that she died of 'congestive cardiac and respiratory failure.' Sakan's chairman declined to comment.
Mr. Goldstein, the Saudi ministry spokesman, declined to comment on individual deaths but said that every case was thoroughly investigated. He did not comment on the inconsistencies between autopsies and police reports and would not say how many people had been arrested or prosecuted in labor cases.
Mr. Goldstein said the government stopped funding Sakan in 2023. Now, he said, it pays the recruiting agency Smasco to run worker-assistance centers.
Three Kenyan women spoke to The Times from inside a Smasco center. The women, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said that they could not go home unless they paid about $400. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
Returning Home
As migration to Saudi Arabia surged, reports of deaths and injuries spread across East Africa. Bodies began arriving. Each story brought new outrage.
People should not have been surprised. The leaders of Kenya and Uganda had ample warning of abuse, yet they signed agreements with Saudi Arabia that lacked protections that other leaders demanded.
The Philippines deal in 2012, for example, guaranteed a $400 monthly minimum wage, access to bank accounts and a promise that workers' passports would not be confiscated.
Kenya initially demanded similar wages, according to a government report, but when Saudi Arabia balked, Kenya agreed to a deal in 2015 with no minimum wage at all.
The treaty contained little beyond a promise to establish a committee to monitor labor issues. The commission was never formed, a government report said.
Mr. Mohamed, the Kenyan president's spokesman, said that the government later negotiated $225 monthly wages. He said Kenyan workers were simply not as highly regarded in Saudi Arabia. 'Philippines is able to dictate the price,' he said.
When Uganda cut its agreement with the Saudi government, they made no mention of a minimum wage. The issue of worker mistreatment was well discussed at the time. The Saudi ambassador to Uganda even wrote a column in a Ugandan newspaper assailing critics who 'offend and abuse the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia' by publicizing abuse.
In 2021, a Kenyan Senate committee found 'deteriorating conditions' in Saudi Arabia and an 'increase in distress calls by those alleging torture and mistreatment.' The committee recommended suspending worker transfers.
When Mr. Ruto was elected president in 2022, though, the campaign to send workers abroad intensified. His government reached a new Saudi labor agreement the following year without a wage increase or substantive new protections.
'It's a cycle of abuse that no one is addressing,' said Stephanie Marigu, a Kenyan lawyer who represents workers.
Now, a few times a month, rural Kenyans head to Nairobi to collect a coffin from the airport.
Hundreds of people gathered in September at a village school in southwestern Kenya. They paid respects to Millicent Moraa Obwocha, who had left her husband and young son behind months earlier.
Her employer sexually harassed and assaulted her, her husband, Obuya Simon Areba, said. Things got so bad last summer, he said, that she asked her Saudi recruiter to rescue her.
A few days later, her husband got the call that she was dead. She was 24. The Kenyan government attributed her death to 'nerve issues.'
Her employer, Abdullah Omar Abdul al-Rahman Hailan, said that Mr. Areba's account was 'misleading and incorrect' and called a Times reporter 'a clown.'
At the funeral, Ms. Obwocha's body lay in an open coffin in a white dress and veil.
Beside her was a six-foot-tall photograph. In it, she smiles with her fingers held up in a V. She is standing outside the airport, brimming with optimism.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Ruto finally speaks after coming under heavy fire from Kenyans
Ruto finally speaks after coming under heavy fire from Kenyans

Business Insider

timean hour ago

  • Business Insider

Ruto finally speaks after coming under heavy fire from Kenyans

Barely a year ago, the president of Kenya, William Ruto, experienced firsthand the pressure of discontent from the Kenyan people, which, via a highly resonant demonstration, called for the resignation of the head of state, under the call 'Ruto must go.' Since then, the president has been no stranger to protests, and the last few days have seen him face yet another outcry. The president of Kenya faced protests from citizens concerning the alleged killing of blogger Albert Ojwang while in police custody. An autopsy contradicted the police's claims regarding Ojwang's cause of death, pointing towards assault as the likely cause. Kenyans have expressed widespread outrage, demanding justice and accountability, pressuring the president to address the situation.

Russian jet suspected of violating Finnish airspace, Defense Ministry says
Russian jet suspected of violating Finnish airspace, Defense Ministry says

Yahoo

time10 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Russian jet suspected of violating Finnish airspace, Defense Ministry says

A Russian military aircraft is suspected of violating Finland's airspace on June 10, the country's Defense Ministry said in a statement. "The investigation into the suspect's airspace breach has been launched immediately," Finnish Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen said. The Finnish border guard is investigating and will share more information as the probe continues, according to the Finnish Defense Ministry. The alleged violation occurred near the city of Porvoo, located about 50 km east of Helsinki. The city lies in the country's far-south, along the Gulf of Finland. Russia regularly stages provocations on NATO's eastern flank, which includes Poland, Finland, and the Baltic countries. On May 22, two Russian aircraft violated Finnish airspace, while the day prior Polish fighter jets intercepted a Russian Su-24 bomber in international airspace over the Baltic Sea. Russian aircraft frequently fly from its exclave, Kaliningrad. The jets often disable their transponders, fail to file flight plans, and do not establish contact with regional air traffic control — a pattern NATO officials describe as high-risk behavior. Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, NATO officials have increasingly warned Moscow could attack the alliance's members in the coming years. In anticipation of increased hostilities, Finland has said it expects a Russian military build-up on its borders after the war in Ukraine ends. On May 19, the New York Times published satellite images which seem to indicate an expansion of military facilities near the Finnish border. Finland joined NATO in 2023 following the onset of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022 and shares a 1,300-kilometer (800-mile) border with Russia. NATO countries in Russia's vicinity have intensified their preparations for a possible conflict. Poland and the Baltic countries moved to abandon a treaty banning land mines and are strengthening the borders shared with Russia and its ally Belarus while urging higher defense spending across the alliance. Read also: Germany plans expansion of air raid shelters amid growing Russian threats, official says We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.

Report gives new details on Trump assassination attempt suspect's 'descent into madness'
Report gives new details on Trump assassination attempt suspect's 'descent into madness'

Yahoo

time18 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Report gives new details on Trump assassination attempt suspect's 'descent into madness'

The 20-year-old gunman who tried to assassinate President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last summer experienced a "descent into madness" leading up to the incident, during which he was "having conversations with someone that wasn't there," a new report says. The New York Times, citing thousands of pages of school assignments, internet activity logs and interviews with dozens of people who knew Thomas Matthew Crooks and the investigation surrounding him, among other documents, reported this week that "he went through a gradual and largely hidden transformation from a meek engineering student critical of political polarization to a focused killer who tried to build bombs." "There was a mysteriousness to Thomas Crooks's descent into madness," Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., who served on a Congressional task force that investigated the July 13, 2024 shooting, told the newspaper. He was "having conversations with someone that wasn't there," Higgins added, after learning information about Crooks' mental health during a trip to Pennsylvania to investigate the assassination attempt. Texts Reveal Officers Were Aware Of Thomas Crooks 90 Minutes Before Shooting Prior to the shooting targeting Trump, the only time Crooks got into trouble was receiving lunch detention in middle school for chewing gum, according to the New York Times. Read On The Fox News App The newspaper reported that Crooks scored 1530 out of a possible 1600 on the SAT and graduated from the Community College of Allegheny County, where he spent several semesters on the dean's list while earning an engineering degree. He was preparing to transfer to Robert Morris University located outside of Pittsburgh, telling classmates he wanted to have a career in aerospace or robotics, the newspaper added. However, Crooks' father noticed his son's mental health taking a turn in the year before the shooting and especially after the May 2024 graduation, telling investigators he had seen Thomas talking to himself and dancing around in his bedroom late at night, the newspaper said. The alleged behavior coincided with a history of mental health and addiction struggles in Crooks' family, the New York Times reported, citing portions of a report from the Pennsylvania State Police. A classmate said to the newspaper that during high school, Crooks enjoyed talking about the economy and cryptocurrencies. At community college, he reportedly designed a chess board for the visually impaired, such as his mother, the New York Times added. "He seemed like a really intelligent kid – I thought he would be able to do whatever he wanted," Trish Thompson, who taught Crooks' engineering at the Community College of Allegheny County, told the newspaper. About a year before graduation, in April 2023, Crooks reportedly wrote an essay in favor of ranked-choice voting in American politics, arguing against "divisive and incendiary campaigns which are pulling the country apart." "As we move closer to the 2024 elections we should consider carefully the means by which we elect our officials," Crooks was quoted by the New York Times as saying. "We need an election system that promotes kindness and cooperation instead of division and anger." Attempted Trump Assassin Seen Walking Around Pennsylvania Rally Hours Before Opening Fire Around that same time, the FBI said, Crooks made more than 25 different firearm-related purchases from online vendors using an alias. One purchase that Crooks made with an encrypted email address was gallons of nitromethane, a fuel additive that can be used to build explosives, according to the New York Times. He reportedly listed his home address for the delivery. In the summer of 2023, Crooks joined a local gun club, the New York Times reported. The newspaper added that Crooks visited news and gun websites, as well as the Trump administration's archives, before narrowing his online searches in the days leading up to the attack to queries such as 'How far was Oswald from Kennedy?'" Searches also included "major depressive disorder" and "depression crisis," the Times said. He also reportedly continued to show up for his job as a dietary aide at the Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in the weeks leading up to the Trump assassination attempt. On the night of the shooting, ATF agents visited Crooks' home in Bethel Park but had to evacuate after one spotted an ammunition can "with a white wire coming out" and a gallon jug labeled "nitromethane" in his closet, according to the New York Times. Outside the property, agents then interviewed Crooks' parents, with them saying he liked building things and visiting the gun range, and his father also reportedly claiming that he did not "know anything" about his article source: Report gives new details on Trump assassination attempt suspect's 'descent into madness'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store