Mick Hartley

I've done Nepalese and Indonesian, so I can't really miss out on Sri Lankan. Maids, that is, in Saudi Arabia:

JEDDAH: Sri Lanka is planning to trim the number of maids employed in the Middle East, a labor official has reportedly said.

Kingsley Ranawaka, chairman of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE), was recently quoted by an international media source as saying that Lankan labor officials have decided to curb the number of housekeepers due to the number of complaints of ill-treatment received from Lankan maids in the region.

The bureau said that in the first half of this year, it received a total of 3,400 complaints, including 577 cases of breach of contract and 479 cases of sexual abuse and other forms of physical violence, as well as complaints of unpaid or underpaid salaries.

Saudi Arabia in particular has been a main market for Sri Lankan workers. For years as many as 500,000 maids work in the Kingdom at any time, according to data published by the Sri Lankan Embassy in Riyadh.

Human Rights Watch issued a report last month on the abuses suffered by domestic workers in Saudi Arabia