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The government of Sri Lanka has taken important steps to improve the protection of Sri Lankan migrant domestic workers’ rights, but as this report demonstrates, those steps have been inadequate and require improved implementation and expansion to ensure the programs fulfill their stated goals. The Sri Lankan government can do more to ensure that domestic workers are not exposed to abuse when they migrate for work.
There is an urgent need for meaningful and prompt reform and enforcement of the labor laws in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE to extend equal protection of the labor laws to domestic workers, including rights to a just wage, overtime pay, weekly rest days, benefits, and workers’ compensation. The governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE also must enforce legal protections enshrined in existing domestic criminal laws, standardized contracts for domestic workers, and international human rights treaties to which each country is a party.
Human Rights Watch makes the following recommendations:
- Strengthen the regulation and monitoring of recruitment agents and subagents.
- Require labor agents to register their subagents; hold agents responsible for the actions of retained subagents.
- Directly regulate subagents through measures that, among other things: require subagents to register with the government or with the labor agents retaining them; set forth clearly defined standards for fees and recruitment practices to reduce overcharging and deception by subagents; and ensure that subagents who violate the regulations face meaningful penalties.
- Establish mechanisms for regular and independent monitoring of labor agencies and retained subagents. Conduct unannounced inspections of recruitment agencies.
- Ensure that labor agents fully translate migrant domestic workers’ job contracts into Tamil as well as Sinhala.
- Establish a monitoring system by which domestic workers report to the SLBFE the costs they paid to recruitment agents and subagents prior to migrating.
- Rigorously collect and investigate complaints about Sri Lankan nationals working at labor agencies in the countries of employment. Create procedures that allow domestic workers to register this information at foreign missions in the countries of employment and upon return to Sri Lanka.
- Improve services for migrant domestic workers at Sri Lankan embassies and consular offices in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE.
- Provide adequate staffing to assist migrant domestic workers seeking assistance, especially in the areas of collection of wages, investigation and prosecution of alleged abuses, and rights while in detention.
- Improve conditions in shelters and safe houses by training staff, providing trauma counseling and health care, and alleviating overcrowding.
- Provide helpdesks and hotlines for workers in Sri Lankan missions in countries of employment; provide referrals for health care, counseling, shelter, and legal aid in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE.
- Train staff in Sri Lankan foreign missions in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE regarding options for redress for migrant domestic workers who have experienced abuse, including procedures for filing a criminal complaint or recovering unpaid wages and legal service providers that provide services to migrant workers.
- Develop a system for picking up domestic workers who are in distress and unable or unwilling to run away. Secure cooperation of local law enforcement as necessary.
- Develop a system for periodically checking on the welfare of domestic workers who have previously contacted the Sri Lankan foreign mission for assistance.
- Cooperate with the governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE to create mutually recognized and enforceable employment contracts and mechanisms to ensure redress for workers with complaints.
- Enhance the existing pre-departure training program for domestic workers by:
- Increasing the rights-awareness and foreign language components of training.
- Providing more detailed information about redress mechanisms such as how to pursue cases against employers and labor agents in the countries of employment, as well as after return to Sri Lanka.
- Providing information about legal limits on recruitment fees and mechanisms for lodging complaints against recruitment agents and subagents who violate the law.
- Ensuring departing domestic workers receive an information kit containing the name, address, and telephone number of their employer; the address and telephone number of the Sri Lankan embassy; the name, address, and telephone number of their labor agency based in the country of employment; a telephone card with pre-programmed numbers of the Sri Lankan embassy and any help centers or shelters; a certain amount of money in local currency; a copy of their passport; and a copy of their employment contract.
- Improve services for returning migrant domestic workers, including by widely disseminating information about complaint mechanisms and providing counseling for migrant domestic workers returning in distress.
- Better publicize complaint and redress mechanisms for abuses available to migrant domestic workers after return to Sri Lanka. Provide detailed information about complaint and redress mechanisms to returning migrant domestic workers at the international airport and at the SLBFE Sahana Piyasa shelter.
- At the international airport and at the SLBFE Sahana Piyasa shelter, record complaints of returning workers in a more consistent and rigorous manner. Canvass returning workers for information about abusive employers and labor agencies, and as privacy considerations permit, make information publicly available, especially to Sri Lankan civil society groups working on domestic workers’ rights. Maintain blacklists of proven abusive employers and recruitment agencies.
- Provide trauma counseling services to returning migrant domestic workers at the SLBFE Sahana Piyasa shelter.
- Distribute information to returning domestic workers outlining the existing institutions and programs that provide counseling and medical care services, legal assistance for domestic workers wishing to pursue cases against labor agents or employers, and post-return economic and reintegration assistance to domestic workers.
- Ensure any medical testing of prospective migrant women or administration of contraceptive medication is voluntary and performed with informed consent. Ensure that prospective migrant domestic workers receive their test results and that confidentiality of medical information is respected.
- Expand public awareness-raising programs for prospective migrant domestic workers to disseminate information on the obligations of labor agents and mechanisms for lodging complaints against recruitment agents and subagents.
- Target villages and local places of employment (e.g. garment factories, tea estates) of prospective migrant domestic workers to inform them about legal limits on recruitment fees, work contract regulations for each country of employment, availability of low-interest loans, and mechanisms for lodging complaints against recruitment agents and subagents who violate the law.
- Collaborate with migrants’ rights groups to make this information available to prospective migrant domestic workers before they have made the decision to migrate and have retained a labor agency.
- Expand state bank and financial institution lending for migrant women to provide an alternative to private moneylenders who provide loans at exorbitant interest rates.
- Ensure these programs feature lower interest rates and extended repayment periods.
- Limit co-guarantor and collateral requirements for migrant women workers.
- Better publicize existing and new credit programs.
- Increase public awareness of the Ministry of Trade’s Sri Lanka Export Credit Insurance Corporation (SLECIC) Bank Guarantee Scheme.
- Better publicize and expand the SLBFE’s Workers Welfare Fund insurance scheme for domestic workers.
- Make coverage more comprehensive by expanding it beyond occupational accident, disability, and death to include harms resulting from physical and sexual abuse and to cover return airfare.
- Provide clearer information to migrant workers about the benefits offered under the insurance scheme. Distribute this information to prospective migrant domestic workers at recruitment agencies and training centers, and to departing and arriving domestic workers at the international airport and the SLBFE Sahana Piyasa shelter.
- Extend the period of validity for migrant workers’ insurance from six months to cover the entire period of the work contract, to ensure that the insurance scheme covers reimbursement of the cost of air ticket in the event of abuse.
- Actively solicit the input of migrants’ rights groups in crafting and implementing policies.
- Include migrants and migrants’ rights advocates in the SLBFE board of directors.
- Consult with migrants and migrants’ rights groups and stakeholders to create social-service programs to identify and address the needs of migrant workers’ families, and to develop projects that provide support to families of migrant workers.
- Eliminate the 10,000-rupee reissuing/replacement fee for confiscated passports.
- The Department of Immigration and Emigration should eliminate this fee for migrant domestic workers who lose their passports while abroad through no fault of their own (e.g. in cases of confiscation by the employer).
To the Governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates
- Cooperate with the government of Sri Lanka to :
- Promptly notify Sri Lankan embassies of detention of Sri Lankan nationals.
- Create mutually recognized and enforceable work contracts.
- Create accessible complaint mechanisms and avenues for redress in cases of unpaid wages, other labor abuses, and criminal complaints.
- Craft agreements with Sri Lankan foreign missions for swift repatriation of migrant domestic workers in cases where repatriation is unavoidable, or if the worker wishes to return to Sri Lanka, to minimize time spent in detention pending return or deportation.
- Create mechanisms to rescue abused domestic workers and investigate abuse of migrant domestic workers. Provide Sri Lankan foreign missions with the authority to conduct joint workplace spot-checks with local authorities, and to go to employers’ homes to pick up Sri Lankan domestic workers in distress.
- Provide equal and comprehensive legal protection to migrant domestic workers.
- Revise labor laws to provide legal protection for domestic workers equal to that afforded to other workers, including provisions governing hours of work, payment of wages, salary deductions, rest days, paid holidays, and workers’ compensation.
- Transfer responsibility for migrant domestic workers’ welfare from the Ministry of Interior to the Ministry of Labor in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE.
- Cease pregnancy testing of migrant domestic workers as a condition of entry to the country and authorization to work, and repeal immigration laws that discriminate on the basis of reproductive status.
- Reform sponsorship laws that require the consent of the employer to change sponsors or exit the country of employment.
- Facilitate transfer of sponsorship, for example, by making temporary employment-based visas nonspecific about employer, so that workers can change employers without losing legal status in the country of employment.
- Facilitate swift repatriation of migrant domestic workers in cases where repatriation is unavoidable, or if the worker wishes to return to Sri Lanka, by eliminating exit visas that require the consent of the sponsor.
- Rigorously prosecute employers and employment agents whose treatment of domestic workers violates existing national laws.
- Investigate, prosecute, and punish perpetrators of physical and sexual violence against domestic workers.
- Investigate, prosecute, and punish perpetrators of forced labor and other labor rights abuses that violate existing national laws.
- Enhance domestic workers’ access to the justice system.
- Provide training for police to identify and investigate abuse against domestic workers and protocols on how to respond to such situations and offer appropriate referrals. Educate police and immigration authorities about the importance of not returning domestic workers to abusive employers against workers’ wishes, and make sure they are familiar with procedures for filing complaints against employers and labor agents.
- Promptly notify detained Sri Lankan migrant workers of their right to contact their consular officials, and provide access to facilities to do so.
- Make visas available to domestic workers so that they can remain in the country of employment while pursuing claims against abusive employers. Do not charge workers for these visas, do not force workers to stay in detention centers or confine them to shelters for duration of their case, and allow complainants to work while pursuing their cases.
- Create and improve mechanisms to monitor and respond to abuse of migrant domestic workers, by:
- Creating accessible complaint mechanisms and avenues for redress in cases of unpaid wages, other labor abuses, and criminal complaints.
- Inspecting workplace conditions regularly. Conduct workplace visits to the homes of employers against whom complaints have been filed and privately interview migrant domestic workers during site visits.
- Imposing meaningful penalties on employers and employment agents, both citizens and non-citizens, who violate the law. Coordinate with Sri Lankan foreign missions as necessary.
- Eliminate policies that require mandatory HIV testing of migrant domestic workers as a condition of entry to the country and authorization to work.
- Ratify the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (Migrant Workers Convention) and key ILO conventions. Comply with treaty-body reporting requirements.
- Issue invitations to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants to conduct country visits to investigate the situation of migrant domestic workers.
- Issue a model employment contract for domestic workers. Translate the model contract into Arabic, Sinhala, and Tamil languages, and make it widely available to prospective migrants.
- Work with local groups to expand technical programs that provide labor rights-based education for migrant workers regarding ILO standards.
- Work with governments to provide technical assistance and specific language to strengthen labor regulations and enforcement consistent with international labor standards.
- Issue a specialized report on the conditions experienced by migrant domestic workers that includes a delineation of their rights under international law.
- Conduct a country visit to Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and/or the UAE to investigate the situation of migrant domestic workers and make recommendations for reforms.
- Provide greater financial and institutional support for local NGO and other civil society advocacy efforts and services for migrant domestic workers.
- Fund microcredit lending programs that provide more favorable interest rates for women who want to migrate, to cover migration costs.
- Fund long-term domestic employment strategies for women, such as projects to develop sustained income-earning activities within Sri Lanka, and job training, vocational skills training, and education programs for Sri Lankan women and girls.
- Fund microcredit lending programs for returned migrant women to launch and sustain self-employment micro-enterprise projects.
November 2007
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