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Imported Labor problems in Iraqi Kurdistan
29.12.2007
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December
29, 2007
SULAIMANIYAH , Kurdistan Region 'Iraq',--,
The tiny Filipino woman’s hands trembled. She was in
hiding, fearing capture at any moment.
She and a friend had come to Iraq’s semi-autonomous
Kurdistan north as guest workers six months earlier.
Now they worried they would be forcibly returned to
Erbil, the Iraqi Kurdistan's capital where they had
been locked in a house for a month and made to work
for free, they said, after their passports,
cellphones and plane tickets were taken away.
The two had escaped by begging their captor to let
them attend church, then making contact with other
Filipino workers, who spirited them away.
Thousands of foreign workers have come to the
Kurdish districts in the last three years, a huge
turnaround for a place that had hardly any before,
making it one of the fastest-growing Middle Eastern
destinations for the world’s impoverished.www.ekurd.net
They come from Ethiopia,
Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Somalia,
supporting an economic boom here that is
transforming Kurdish society.
But nearly all foreign workers interviewed over a
two-week period here said they had been deceived by
unscrupulous agents who arrange the journeys. Unable
to communicate, some arrive not knowing what country
they are in. Once here, their passports are seized
by their employment agencies, and they are unable to
go home.
Some are satisfied with their decision to come here,
but agents’ fees are high, often as much as two
years’ wages. To come up with the money, many borrow
at high interest rates and find that their wages are
equal only to the interest. In essence, they say,
they end up working for free.
While war rages to the south, mile after mile of new
buildings are rising here, and wages for Kurds have
risen sevenfold since 2003. Billions of dollars in
investment are flowing in from Turkey and the United
States, and large-scale oil exploration has just
begun. |
From Ethiopia Yobdar Abu, 23, arrived in the
Kurdistan region in October via Dubai, having been
told she was headed for Turkey.
From Indonesia Eva Enju, left, is among the more
fortunate workers, having been assigned to Latifah
Noori, 75, who is kindly. photos NY.times |
For the Kurds — guest
workers themselves in Europe for generations — the
newly arrived Asians and Africans are met with
ambivalence. There are too few Kurds to take all the
low-paying menial jobs, and many are uncomfortable
hiring local Arabs, given the longstanding animosity
between the groups.
Foreign women are integral to another
transformation. As in some wealthy Persian Gulf
states, the traditional Kurdish lifestyle is
adopting some European ways: the rich and powerful
want live-in maids, nightclubs need non-Muslim women
to serve alcohol and men want intimate relationships
before marriage — all roles largely forbidden for
Kurdish women.
Importing such workers relies on a far-reaching
network of recruiters in poor countries, and for
most of the 150 Bangladeshis cleaning the streets
here, the journey to Kurdistan began at 5 Bonany
Road in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the headquarters of the
Travel Mix agency.
“They said at the agency that I would make $300 a
month and work as a waiter in a restaurant,” said
Tufazil Hussan. He said that he took out a $3,000
loan with monthly interest of $150 to pay the
agency, but that upon his arrival his passport was
taken and he was put to work sweeping the streets
seven days a week for $155 a month.
Optimistic, Mr. Hussan, 30, thinks he will soon get
a better-paying job; other Bangladeshis say he will
probably sweep the streets until the end of his
three-year contract, then go home with little or
nothing.
His supervisor, Abdul Khadar, is not much better
off. A farmer from Tangai, Bangladesh, he makes $185
a month. Mr. Khadar said he borrowed $4,000 to pay
Travel Mix. He estimates that for his first two
years in Kurdistan, he will work only to pay off his
loan.
For the city, the guest workers fill a manpower
shortage while saving money. “We need 1,500
cleaners; we have 350,” said Razgar Ahmed Hussein,
Sulaimaniyah’s director of cleaning operations. “I
never wanted to bring foreign workers to this city,
but we had no other option. Kurds do not want the
jobs.”
The city pays the local Lion Gate agency $325 per
month for each cleaner. “The company takes more than
half of that,” Mr. Hussein said. “It’s not a fair
arrangement. Groups of Bangladeshis have tried to
run away to Turkey.www.ekurd.net
If you pay them what
they need, they won’t run away. Three months ago the
situation was so bad, they were living in a garage,
their food was so little. They were begging for
money in the street.”
Lion Gate officials said conditions had never been
bad and were getting better. “We pay for the
workers’ housing, food, electricity and plane
tickets,” said Nizar Mustafa Chawjwan, director of
the company’s Sulaimaniyah office. “We take care of
the workers’ health, and we have brought a cook from
Bangladesh for them.”
As for allegations that Lion Gate business partners
in Bangladesh cheated workers, Mr. Chawjwan said,
“If Bangladeshi agents take money from them, we
don’t know anything about the deals they make over
there.”
Nisha Varia, an investigator with Human Rights
Watch, said the combination of unscrupulous brokers
in the workers’ home countries and labor practices
in Kurdistan left the workers with few options.
“Each side denies that it knows what other is
doing,” she said. “In reality, they are much more
interconnected than that. They are dong business
together, and that leads to these recruiting fees
and debts, and puts the workers at risk of forced
labor.”
Mr. Chawjwan argued that the wages workers got were
higher than those in the Persian Gulf, and that his
company had good reason to hold the workers’
passports. “We keep the passports to stop them from
running away to Turkey,” he said. “We spend a lot of
money to bring each one here.”
But Ms. Varia rejected that argument. “It is a
violation of international law to take someone’s
passport,” she said. “You don’t own a person because
they signed a contract.”
Guest workers are a new phenomenon here, and
government workers acknowledge that there is no
agency to monitor their labor conditions.
An agent who has brought in hundreds of Asian and
African women in their teens and early 20s said that
some had complained of unwanted sexual advances. She
told of one client who expressed interest in an
exceptionally beautiful young Ethiopian woman,
offering extra money for her. He disappeared with
the woman for several months, then inexplicably sent
her home at his own expense. “I suspect he got her
pregnant,” the agency manager said, insisting on
anonymity.
Another Filipino, who gave her name only as Kikay
for fear of retribution from her employer, said she
and other young women came expecting $600 a month to
work in restaurants in Kurdistan, which they were
told was near Greece.
“In the Philippines, they said we get the contract
in Dubai, then in Dubai the agent said the contract
is at the airport,” she said. “At the airport, they
grab our luggage and push it through the X-ray
machine, then they start shouting at us, ‘Go, go,
your contract in Kurdistan.’ We are confused. We
don’t know what to do.”
In Sulaimaniyah, Kikay said, an agent from the
Qadamkher employment agency met them at the airport.
He was carrying a gun and was friendly with the
police and immigration officials.
“They took our passports and then drove us to a
house,” she said. “We couldn’t understand what they
were saying. We were very scared.” Once there, Kikay
said, the women were presented with a contract
paying them $200 a month to work in a hotel.
If the women wanted to leave, they say now, they had
to pay $2,000 to get their passports back. Cold and
hungry, clad only in T-shirts in the winter chill,
they signed the contract. As with the Bangladeshis,
Kikay says, her wages are about equal to the
interest on the loans she took out to come to the
region, which she was surprised to learn is part of
Iraq.
The local Qadamkher agency rejected allegations that
workers were brought here without their knowledge or
consent. But several of their contracts specified
that foreign workers must pay $100 to $350 for every
month left on the contracts if they break them. Most
contracts run two or three years.
Sana Muhammad, a Qadamkher employee, said business
was growing rapidly. The agency collects a one-time
fee of $2,500 from Kurdish families for each
domestic worker.
“We have requests for 10 Indonesian girls right now
that we’re trying to fill,” she added. “We have
Ethiopian girls available but clients don’t want
them.www.ekurd.net
They say their faces are
ugly — the black skin is unfamiliar.” (Similarly,
the city cleaning supervisor said the Bangladeshi
cleaners had to be moved away from the market
because they were being racially harassed.)
Eva Enju is one of the Indonesian women in demand
here. This fall, shortly after her 18th birthday,
she arrived here believing she had landed in Turkey.
She makes $150 a month and has had the good luck to
be placed as a maid with Latifah Noori, a kind and
funny 75-year-old who is partly paralyzed.
“I came here so that I could save money to buy a
house,” Ms. Enju explained.
Ms. Noori says Ms. Enju has been a godsend, working
around the clock without complaint. “Enju has no one
here,” she said. “She has just me to serve.”
But Kikay’s situation is less amicable. “My manager
has my passport and identification,” she said. “Do
you think they will let me leave at the airport
without it?” If not, she said, “then I am trapped,
and there is no future for me here.”
nytimes com
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