Lured to West Asia, Punjab’s trafficked women send SOS

The 33-year-old’s is among of a string of recent cases – of women domestic helps from impoverished families being lured to the West Asia with the promise of jobs – that have been coming to light in Punjab, a state where the outflow for work to the West Asia has traditionally been restricted to men.

A senior official in the office of the Protector of Emigrants under the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), New Delhi, said they have been receiving such complaints in “large numbers”. “We are issuing instructions to the authorities to spread awareness about such frauds,’’ the officer said.

A senior police officer said, “Most of these women are taken on transit visas for a couple of weeks and when this visa expires, their employers spend around Rs 2.50 lakh to get a work visa for them. They are not paid any salaries; instead they would have paid the agents through their noses to get the job.”

Sources in the Muscat Embassy said the government of  India has been raising the matter with governments in the West Asia. “Over the past four to five years, the agents have been able to sell nearly 500 women from Punjab, Haryana and several other states of India. The women are often sold for a mere Rs 2.5 to 3 lakh to people of these countries,” said a source in the MEA.

Speaking to The Indian Express from the Indian embassy in Muscat, where she had sought shelter, a 24-year-old from Tarn Taran, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she and her friend were passed down from one household to another, where their employers forced them to work for 16-17 hours in a day. “They did not pay us, saying they had already paid our agents.’’

A 44-year-old from a village in Jalandhar, says an agent in her village sent her to Saudi Arabia in July 2017 as a domestic help. A mother of three with a physically challenged husband at home, she thought the money would help her family. “It’s only when I landed there that I realised I had been sold to someone. The employers said they had already paid the agent, and they expected me to work round the clock,” she says.

In August that year, she managed to send an SOS to her family, but despite the intervention of then External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, it took the authorities almost a year to rescue the 44-year-old as she couldn’t pinpoint her whereabouts in a city of Saudi Arabia.

A daily-wager from a village in Phillaur whose wife sent out the video SOS last month, says the 33-year-old has been in confinement since she reached Dubai seven months ago. In November last, he filed a complaint against the travel agent, but nothing has come of the case.

“We somehow managed to arrange Rs 1 lakh to send my wife to work in the West Asia.  She was taken to Dubai on a tourist visa, but then her visa expired and she is now living there as an illegal immigrant,” says Shinderpal.

NRI Affairs Minister Punjab Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal told The Indian Express that there has been a steady rise in cases of domestic helps being trafficked to the West Asia.

Dubai-based businessman and social worker S P Singh Oberoi, who has intervened by paying ‘blood money’ to secure the release of several Indians, many of them on death row, in the West Asia, is now working to bring back women domestic workers stranded there.

Oberoi said that over a 100 girls are stranded at the Muscat embassy. He said he has been taking up the matter with the Indian government for the past four years.

To date, Oberoi said, he has rescued 57 women, mainly from Punjab, Haryana, UP, Bihar, Maharashtra, and Kolkata.

Oberoi added that the women realise they have been duped only after they land in the Middle East, and are sold off by the agents to prospective employers. “If a woman employee runs away, the employer files a complaint and a case is lodged against her. Then we take up such cases and pay at least Rs 2.50 lakh to secure the girl’s release,” said Oberoi.