NEW DELHI: The Sri Lankan government appears ready to implement a ban on female domestic workers to the ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia in the Gulf after continued reports of sexual violence and abuse have left women struggling for survival in the Kingdom. It also comes after a Sri Lankan domestic worker was executed by the Saudi government after the infant in her care died. It was the final straw, Colombo said. The government said it would raise the minimum age for female domestic workers to be eligible to seek employment in Saudi Arabia to 25 years from the present 21 with the ultimate goal of stopping such employment altogether. “Gradual phase-out is the idea,” government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said. “We can't stop it overnight. It's a gradual process and increasing the age limit is part of that.” Colombo recalled its envoy to Saudi Arabia in response to the beheading on January 9 of Rizana Nafeek, who was sentenced to death in 2007 accused of killing her employer's daughter while she was bottle-feeding. A third of the two million Sri Lankan maids working abroad are in Saudi Arabia, according to the country's foreign employment bureau. Many households in the Middle East are highly dependent on housemaids from African and South Asian countries. In some cases of reported domestic abuse, maids have attacked the children of their employers after they were mistreated themselves. In the case of Nafeek, the Saudi interior ministry said, the infant was strangled after a dispute between her and the baby's mother. Rights groups have criticized the beheading and Saudi Arabia's handling of the case. In a statement before the execution, Amnesty International said that it appeared Nafeek had no access to lawyers either during her pre-trial interrogation or at her trial in 2007. Women in Sri Lanka and maids working in India have told Bikyanews.com that working in Saudi Arabia was the worst experience of their lives and they were repeatedly mistreated by their employers. BN
