Three women—Saraswati Baral from Pokhara, Shova Kumari Limbu from Damak and Geeta Devi Chaudhari from Udayapur— who were kept captive in Kuwait for months have been rescued by the International Rolpali Service Society. DB Budhathoki from the Service Society says that it has been rescuing helpless women who find themselves lost or are held captive abroad.

 

Brokers have been tak­ing young Nepali women to Kuwait via India for them to work as domestic help. The society informs that many of these women have to live like captives once they reach Kuwait. Baral was taken to Kuwait via India a year ago. In the one year that she was there, she worked in four households. She says they kept moving her from one household to another under false assurances that she’d receive better treatment in the next household.

 

Victims have confided in the officials of the society that they didn’t get their salary on time. Even though Baral worked in Kuwait for a year, she only received five months of salary. She also says that when the house owners went outside, they locked her in the house. Rescued women like Baral say they were treated more like captives than like domestic help.

 

According to Bal Bahadur GM, the vice-president of the Rolpali Service Society’s Kuwait branch, when Baral was rescued, she was physi­cally and mentally tortured. Someone who came to know Baral informed the society about her plight and asked for help in rescuing her.

 

After her rescue, Baral was handed over to the Nepali Embassy in Kuwait. Earlier, two women who were rescued from Kuwait were also sent to Nepal in coopera­tion with the embassy.

 

Brokers in Nepal take women to Kuwait, where another set of brokers charge a hefty sum to find humili­ating and pathetic jobs for them, informs the Rolpali Service Society. Women who go to Kuwait don’t know they are being taken there illegally, and only when they find themselves in captivity do they realize that they have been trapped.