At least 33 migrant workers who left Sri Lanka to find employment in Kuwait have returned to the island after concerns about their working environments forced them to leave.
The Sri Lankan embassy in Kuwait had to co-ordinate with the Middle Eastern government to ensure the workers were kept in a safe house before they were able to leave the country.
There are an estimated 100,000 migrant workers from Sri Lanka in Kuwait, predominately compromised of female domestic workers.
A study into domestic workers by the Arab Times underlined the widespread mistreatment of domestic workers. The paper found that 28% of employers refuse to give domestic workers a single day of rest weekly and nearly half of employers did not allow their domestic workers to leave their house during rest days.
Thousands of Tamil women have sought employment in the Gulf, primarily as domestic workers, where abuse and exploitation and even enslavement is frequently reported. Many also report being exploited, defrauded out of their wages and being left trapped or abandoned on foreign soil by the agencies which organise the employment and travel.
