“Day and night I had to be ready,” said 24-year-old Charisse, a Filipina maid who worked in a Kuwaiti household for a year and a half. “At night, I could only sleep for an hour or two. The husband was nice, but his wife and three children beat me and I was not allowed any contact with my family.”
Her friend Malaya, 29, also worked in a Kuwaiti household until very recently.
“I was given food once a day, and only leftovers, like a dog. Very unsanitary,” Malaya said. “At one point I asked the lady of the house if she’d rather have a robot. She responded by spitting on me and hitting me with a broom.”
These two women, whose names have been changed to protect their privacy, have spent the last few days in a new government-run shelter for “runaway maids” in a Kuwaiti suburb. The house, which has been in use for months, is set to formally open later this year. Another such shelter which opened in 2007, had room for only 50 women; the new one has 500 beds and currently houses around 150 women.
Source : yahoo.com
