Thomson-Reuters, 2 September 2014
NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A Kenyan domestic worker in Saudi Arabia was attacked by her employer with a kitchen knife and stabbed eight times before wresting the knife from him, The Star newspaper reported on Tuesday.
After recovering in hospital, she was taken to a desert jail where she met many other foreigners, including about 20 other Kenyans, who had also been badly treated by employers and were awaiting repatriation, the paper said.
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The woman, known as Naomi, found work in Saudi Arabia through a Nairobi-based recruitment agency but left her employer after being attacked, insulted, overworked and having her mobile phone confiscated.
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The government has faced accusations of failing adequately to monitor overseas recruitment agencies.
The government banned Kenyans in June 2012 from going to the Middle East as domestic workers, but lifted the ban in November 2013.
The Kenyan labour ministry said that it had inspected 389 out of an estimated 500 labour recruitment agencies in 2013, the 2014 U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons report said.