by Philip Shehadi
Somawathie stumbled into the Sri Lankan Embassy sobbing, her frail body cut and bruised.
"She beat me, she tore out my hair, she bit me," she whimpered, turning to show wounds on the back of her leg as ^ she poured out yet another domestic maid's horror tale.
Hundreds of thousands of Asian women have flocked to the oil-rich Gulf to work as maids, but for some the promise of good wages has turned to a nightmare.
Growing reports of abuse have led some governments to ban or restrict work permits for maids. Kuwait, among other Gulf Arab governments, is taking steps to regulate a flourishing, semilegal trade in domestic help.
Somawathie, a 39-year-old mother of five, had been working in Kuwait for only a month when her mistress pushed her into a labor attache's office.
"She's crazy. Send her back," the employer screamed. She claimed Somawathie had ripped out her own hair, bitten herself and torn up her only possessions in a fit of madness.
But embassy officials registered Somawathie, who clutched a plastic bag holding a lock of hair, a shredded dress and bits of letters, as the 246th case of abuse or non-payment of wages that month.
The Sri Lankan Embassy records an average of 300 complaints a month from maids. Most simply aren't paid. Some say they were thrown from balconies, doused with boiling water or seared with heated knives.
"My employer got into her raging moods whenever she had a quarrel with her husband," 29-year old Wimalawathe told the Kuwait Times last November after running away and taking refuge in the embassy.
"She would continue to beat me even when her hands were covered with my blood."
Sri Lankan diplomats went to visit 22year-old Bala Kumari in hospital last September after she had been slashed with a knife, dunked in boiUng water and beat on her back and legs. Doctors counted 83 wounds.
About 60 maids are now in the embassy's custody awaiting the outcome of court cases or simply plane tickets home. Some have been there as long as 15 months.
The Gulf Arab states may have the largest number of maids per capita in the world. In Kuwait they number around 120,000 or an average of one for every household.
"Eighty-five per cent of the maids are quite happy, " said Sri Lankan Ambassador Qader Mohammed. But he told Reuters the plight of the rest was of enough concern for his government to be considering a total ban on the export of maids.
India and Bangladesh already refuse to certify work visas for maids in the Gulf.
The Philippines ended a 10-month ban on requests for domestic servants last November but strictly limited applicants to the families of senior government officials, diplomats and employees of international organizations.
The Filipino ban led to a row with Saudi Arabia, which retaliated last year by imposing a five-month freeze on work permits for all Filipino workers.
Kuwaiti officials have criticized their society's apparent dependence on maids for home chores and have wondered aloud about the threat to
traditional values posed by non-Arabic speaking, non-Muslim nannies.
"This is not a very healthy phenomenon, but it is natural," Planning Minister Abdul-Rahman al Awadi told foreign reporters.
Source: The Asian Church Woman Quarterly News Bulletin, 1989 ACWC, 91-175 Shin Soo Dong Mapo-Ku, Seoul 121-110 Korea