Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Sri Lanka Housekeeper Abused by Employer

A Sri Lankan housekeeper returned from her job in Saudi Arabia with 24 nails inside her body -- the result of torture by the family who employed her, a doctor and government official said Wednesday.

L.G. Ariyawathi's body is riddled with needles and nails, which are scheduled to be removed Friday, a doctor confirmed Wednesday.

Ariyawathi, 49, returned to Sri Lanka on Saturday from Saudi Arabia and was hospitalized the next day with severe pain at a facility where she told a local newspaper that her employers tortured her with the nails as punishment.

''They (employer and his family) did not allow me even to rest. The woman at the house had heated the nails and then the man inserted them into my body,''

She told the paper that she went to Saudi Arabia in March and was paid only two months' salary, with her employer withholding three months' salary to buy an air ticket to send her home.

The 24 nails are ''inside the body due to torture meted out by her Saudi employer,'' Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena, deputy minister of economic development, said in a statement on a government website.

Abeywardena said the government would ''report about this matter to the Saudi Government and provide her adequate compensation.''

Kalyana Priya Ramanayake, a spokesman for Sri Lanka's Foreign Employment Bureau, said that Ariyawathi had been too afraid to complain about the abuse to Saudi authorities, fearing that her employers might not let her return home. She also did not report the abuse to Sri Lankan officials, until she was hospitalized.

The bureau is a government agency that oversees the welfare of expatriate workers.

Working as housekeepers or drivers, Sri Lankan workers can earn higher salaries overseas. About 1.5 million Sri Lankans work abroad, nearly 400,000 of them in Saudi Arabia alone.