Abused domestic workers in Jordan

Twenty-four Sri Lankan former domestic workers, many of whom report being abused by their employers, have been stranded in Jordan since January 2011. They are unable to pay government-imposed fines and threatened with eviction. An article of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantees the right to leave any country. This article has been Jordanian law since 2006, yet the Sri Lankans still have been denied the right to leave as a result of Jordan’s system of fining people for overstaying their residency. The migrant domestic workers were not responsible for falling out of documented residency status; they had no means to rectify their situation, and are too poor to pay the fines. The Jordanian government is trying to punish these workers for escaping abusive households by continuously giving them daily fines that prevent them to return home to their families. Some reasons the workers fled from their workplaces is because of non-payment of salaries, refusal by the employer to buy them a required ticket to return home, beatings, or overwork. According to the unified standard employment contract for domestic workers and a 2009 Labor Ministry regulation, the employer is responsible for applying for the worker’s permits, and for paying the fines if he or she failed to do so. The employer is also responsible to provide the worker with a ticket home after she has completed two years of work and subsequently fell out of status. The Labor Ministry officials are failing at their job under Jordanian law toward these Sri Lankan workers. The employers are not being punished as they should be and the workers have to pay unfairly. It is an abuse towards the Sri Lankan women because the officials should be handling this according to the law and punishing the abusive employers and allowing the women to return home to their families.

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/04/08/jordan-abused-domestic-workers-stranded