Most of the comments have gone in depth into finding a million ways to define the term slavery - blaming profit driven companies as being culprits of it indirectly. But let's not go so far.
Watch the video below and tell me what comes to your mind...
"Where do you find people trapped in houses anymore?" Well if your Sri Lankan you know the answer!
A Sri Lankan should relate to this video more than possibly any other community. Why? Well I'm sorry if you haven't realized but as per the last statistic reports we have a staggering 282,000 migrant workers with 119,000 being housemaids.
It won't be fair to say that all 119k of those people are not treated well by their employers and don't have satisfactory wage structures and working conditions. However, we can't deny that most stories we hear of such jobs are not fairy-tale like. Added to that there have been those very unfortunate events which have been in the news as well.
So that proud figure of $ 7 Billion that we get through remittances of overseas workers is from Modern Day Slavery? This btw is more than 10% of our GDP and the largest source of Foreign Income to the country!
What can we do about it? I don't know - you tell me. Probably for starters -
EDUCATE: ourselves first and others around us that the concept of Modern Day Slavery is very real and something that is very directly part and parcel of what over Hundred Thousand Sri Lankans are experiencing (both migrant workers and also locally)
Also make it a point to make aware and educate those who are possibly looking to go for such a job - this maybe a domestic helper at home or someone that we may know of. Of course it is mostly a last resort to choose to be a migrant house maid, but at least we've done our part in making them aware of the possible risks.
Maybe you have some more ideas to add to it? Put in the comments box below.
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| Break the Shackles! |
The issue is compounded by the fact that there is no safety net for families of migrant women and also that so called religious leaders and women's groups point fingers at the migrant women accusing them of leaving their little ones unattended or at the "mercy" of fathers, grandfathers and uncles..... Well the women doing the pointing are often like us who were never forced to bend our back to scrub the floors - cook and clean even for our own family and obviously know nothing of what it is like to answer a child who is hungry asking for food and not being able to give it.
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