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While Zimbabwe rescues its citizens caught up in the most appalling labour servitude, something very close to slavery if legally and technically not quite that bad, we now need to do more to stop our people from getting into these dreadful conditions in the first place.
The latest rescue involved 105 women and two men trapped in domestic work in unnamed countries along the southern shore of the Gulf. But the domestic work was not something regulated by the sort of labour laws that people might be used to in Southern Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular. There appears to be a gap in Gulf laws when it involves contract labour.
There were lured to the Gulf by the opportunity to earn reasonable salaries, at least on the domestic worker scale, and while they expected to have to work hard for the money, and obey the local laws and custom, which would involve dress codes and zero alcohol, they calculated that they could save a decent amount during their two-year contract and return home with some cash to set themselves up here.
What they were not expecting was what amounted to slavery, that is being under the total control day and night seven days a week of their employer, backed by the agent who recruited them. And this control involved more than just being at the beck and call of their employer with no time off at all, ever. It involved verbal abuse and in most cases physical abuse, beatings and worse, without any protection or redress. They could not even escape since their passports were held by the employer or the agent.
Their low salary, the one actually paid not the one promised by the recruiter, of US$60 to US$80 a month, was paid directly to the agent to meet the costs of arranging the work and getting them to the Gulf, plus the huge profit margins the agent would add on.
Legally their contracts might be bought and sold, in practice it was the persons themselves, making this de facto if not legal slavery.
An additional problem is that a domestic worker is by themselves. They have no contact with others. Companies in the Gulf employ others in lower-skilled work for construction and the like, but here they work with others in the same boat, mix with others, and besides being treated better by a company rather than an individual can get easy access to their consul of something goes seriously wrong.
A young woman stuck in a legal contract with an abusive employer and no access to anyone else is in a far worse position. The Government became aware of what was going on. That sounds difficult but the Government, from past experience of trapped citizens had set up remote counselling centres across the Gulf, which at least made it possible for messages to get through and for investigation to start.
With the subsequent rescue the Government has done a very good job, taking action rather than just complaining, ineffectively. The Government had to buy out the contracts, which in earlier times would have been more accurately called ransoming the captured slaves since this is basically what it amounted to. This cost up to US$2 500 for each Zimbabwean. So someone somewhere has made a lot of money. They were then brought home, and a lot of essential help given to them, which first concentrated on counselling, with professionals brought in when necessary, and then some basic help with setting themselves up back home, in businesses such as poultry keeping, and the modest help of up to US$1 000 to start those little businesses. They have also been helped to reintegrate into their families.
What now must be addressed is the sort of illegal employment agency that recruits people like this into domestic work in the Gulf, and into other low skilled work if that problem suddenly arises. They are lied to, and they are not just exploited but effectively enslaved.
We need to remember that we are not talking about a pilot taking a job with Emirates, or an engineer recruited for exceptionally skilled work, or a university lecturer taking on a post for a specialised subject. They will have respectable contracts. We are talking about the other end of the market, for the unskilled and low skilled.
Promises are made. Contracts are drawn up. Advertising can easily, these days, be online with the agent not even physically present in Zimbabwe, and most of the arrangements can be remote. But at some stage a contract has to be signed, the work permit has to be stamped in the passport and the ticket handed over, so there is some possibility of physical contact although a lot can be done even here at arm’s length through courier services. At worst the worker has to check in at an airport.
One difficulty is that Zimbabwe is a free country. Every citizen is entitled to a passport, with only those out on bail for criminal charges having to hand it in to the clerk of court, and every citizen is entitled to seek and accept employment elsewhere, and every citizen with an air ticket is entitled to fly anywhere.
So we cannot stop people accepting dubious work contracts, visas and tickets and leaving. But we can warn and advise. And we need to do more here. We can track down the agents, even if they just use a web-site, and then complain to the web host to remove this, or put in a warning. We have enough evidence of slavery to make that complaint stick. We can track down the local contact, or the local agent if there is one.
Regrettably there are Zimbabweans who will do anything for money, such as selling drugs to children, so selling a fellow citizen into near slavery is not impossible. But if we can find them then the courts can take action, even if the charge is just running an unregistered business. No doubt those whom we have rescued in the past and just rescued again can help with names and procedures.
And then we can act. We can use the two international bodies, the International Labour Organisation and the International Organisation for Migration, to find out where abusive labour contracts are legal, or at least not interfered with, and see where there are places where those in such contracts can get help promptly, at least be put into practical contract with the nearest Zimbabwean consulate or embassy.
One useful addition to Government services would be to have offices where those considering a foreign labour contract can at least check if this is a rational contract, and can hear about what happened to the last batch of employees who took that sort of contract in that country. It is far cheaper to warn and advise and just pass on information than to mount a rescue, credible as that is.
The recruitment is, after all, of people without legal degrees, probably cannot decode the legal language of a contract, and probably cannot afford to hire a lawyer to check it out. But if they could call in at a Government office and be told the last person with such a contract ended up in two years of slavery they could then learn from others and back out.
Online Reporter