Uganda brings maids home from S Arabia after abuse complaints

KAMPALA: Ugandan officials are helping to bring back about 24 women working as domestic staff in Saudi Arabia after complaints about abuse that prompted a ban on sending Ugandans as housemaids to the Gulf state, a spokesman said on Friday.

Seven women have returned to Uganda so far this week after the Ugandan Embassy in Saudi Arabia intervened when they left their employers complaining about abuse and mistreatment and moved into Saudi detention centres waiting to go home.

Sheikh Rashid Yahya Ssemuddu, the Ugandan ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said the women were staying at a shelter operated by the Saudi Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

The Ugandan government last week announced a ban on sending housemaids to Saudi Arabia after a barrage of complaints about workers being treated inhumanely and said the ban would remain until working conditions were "deemed fitting".

Ssemuddu said about 24 Ugandan women were at the shelter, some needing paperwork and airline tickets after complaining they had been held as slaves and their passports taken away.

"We are in daily contact with them and efforts are underway to have the rest of the women return home in the coming few days," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.  The Saudi Embassy in Uganda did not respond to requests for comments.