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Farirai Machivenyika Senior Reporter
An investigating team will soon be dispatched to Oman to engage the authorities there to facilitate repatriation of at least 18 Zimbabwean women that were trafficked to the Asian country to work as domestic workers, but are facing exploitation at the hands of their employers.
The decision to send the team was reached following a meeting of an Inter-Ministerial Committee on trafficking in persons chaired by the Ministry of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage.
The Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Mr Aaron Nhepera, said the team will ascertain the number of women affected amid estimations that they could be at least 100 victims. Engagements with Oman authorities are being led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
“The other resolution we have made is to dispatch an investigative committee to Oman as soon as possible so that they can talk to the 18 victims I have made reference to and check if there are no other victims,” he said.
“As soon as we have completed our engagements with the Oman government and we have deliberated on these issues we will start repatriating our citizens. Our young women are being lured to Oman to work as domestic workers there and the conditions they are working there are akin to slavery.
“Government is concerned by the conditions and as a committee we were deliberating ways we can extricate our citizens from that situation which is not only deplorable but unacceptable.”
Mr Nhepera also warned the generality of Zimbabweans to beware of the trafficking syndicates.
“We urge Zimbabweans to be wary of offers from some of these countries of employment opportunities and advise that they check with the authorities before taking up such offers,” Mr Nhepera said.
In 2016, over 120 women were rescued from Kuwait after they were trafficked to Middle Eastern country under similar circumstances.
Early this year, a 29-year-old woman, Tendai Muswe, appeared before a Harare magistrate on allegations of trafficking women to Oman.
The court heard that sometime between October 2021 and January 2022, Muswe recruited several Zimbabwean ladies to go and work in Oman as house maids.
Court papers show that Muswe misrepresented through the recruitment process that all the victims they recruited would receive lucrative salaries in Oman.
She also secured all the required travelling documents for the victims.
The court heard Muswe’s accomplices in Oman sent air tickets and visas to both accused and the victims through WhatsApp.
It is alleged that the victims departed on different dates to Oman, where upon arrival, they were sold for labour exploitation and servitudes to their employers.
The court heard that while in Oman, the complainants were subjected to verbal and sexual abuse and labour exploitation through working for long hours a day without being paid.
They worked without time off and were not allowed to communicate with the outside world as their cell phones and passports were allegedly confiscated by their agents and the Oman immigration officials.
The State prosecution notified the court that only one victim has managed to come back to Zimbabwe.
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