GOVT TOLD TO PROTECT SLAVERY OF KENYANS IN ARABIA

The ministry of Foreign Affairs has been challenged to put in place mechanisms to establish the cause of deaths of many Kenyans in Arab countries that continues to rise. Kiambu women representative Nyokabi Gethecha said it was unfortunate to see innocent job seekers, especially those working as house helps dying under mysterious circumstances and yet no action was being taken to know the cause of the numerous deaths.

She was speaking at St Teresa Hospital in Kikuyu last week evening when she condoled the family of the late Eunice Wanjiku who was allegedly strangled to death by her employer in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

While condemning the brutal death of her daughter, a distraught Chege Kahiga, recalled how she went to the Arab country in search of greener pastures in 2012 and was employed as a househelp only to come back home in a coffin.

He said that after working for about a month, she called home complaining that she was being mistreated and that her life had become miserable and expressed he wish to return to Kenya.

“We are a poor family and Wanjiku was our only hope of improving our lives and therefore when she sent a distress call from abroad, we became very devastated,” he said fighting back tears.

As fate would have it that was the last call she ever made to her family while alive owing to the fact that she could no longer be reached through her mobile telephone.

Her father said that the family kept hoping that she would one day contact them or come back home safely but much to their chagrin, on March 3 2014, the family was informed by the Foreign Affairs ministry that she had died in 2012 and that her body would be flown to Kenya in a week’s time.

“When we sought to know what had caused her death, we were told that her body had been lying at a mortuary marked as “unidentified female” and that she might have been strangled to death,” he said.

It took the intervention of Nyokabi to have the body reach the family almost six months after they learnt of the untimely death.

The politician urged those seeking jobs as househelps in the Arab world to shelve the plans and at the same time called upon the government to keep track of all those working in the Arab world.

The deceased’s mother Leah Gathoni said that her daughter who was born in 1976 and was employed by a senior police officer in the foreign country who is suspected to have been molesting her sexually.