Gulf states urged to end sponsorship system to save migrant workers

20 April 2010, 18:00 PM

Staff Correspondent

Gulf countries must end their sponsorship system that leaves migrant workers exposed to potential abuse, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said yesterday, reports Arab News from Jeddah. “Reports concerning this region consistently cite ongoing practices of unlawful confiscation of passports, withholding of wages and exploitation by some recruitment agencies and employers,” Navanethem Pillay told a small gathering at King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST) in Thuwal. The call of the UN rights chief is significant for around 4 million Bangladeshis working in the Gulf countries. They send majority of the $10 billion remittance annually home, but their plights both in the process of immigration to those countries and during their stays are quite common. “Some are held in prolonged detention after they escape abusive employers and may be unable to obtain access to judicial recourse and effective remedies for their plight,” Pillay singled out the systems in many of the countries, which require workers to have local sponsors, known as kafala. Some Gulf countries such as Bahrain are scrapping the kafala system, while others such as Kuwait are overhauling labour laws or introducing a minimum wage to improve conditions for millions of foreign workers. “I wholeheartedly support those efforts and call on other states to replace the kafala system with updated labour laws that can better balance rights and duties,” she said. She called the situation of migrant domestic workers of particular concern, because their isolation in private homes makes them even more vulnerable to physical, psychological and sexual violence.