PROGRESS FOR DOMESTIC WORKERS SLOWED BY BUREACRACY

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 KUWAIT 000239

SIPDIS

SIPDIS
NOFORN

FOR NEA/ARP, INL/HSTC AND G/TIP

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/19/2017
TAGS: PGOV PHUM ELAB ID KU TIP
SUBJECT: PROGRESS FOR DOMESTIC WORKERS SLOWED BY BUREACRACY

REF: A. 06 KUWAIT 4649

B. 06 KUWAIT 4351

C. 06 KUWAIT 3993

D. 06 KUWAIT 2147

Classified By: CDA Matthew Tueller for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).


1. (C/NF) Summary: GOK attempts to address the abuse of
domestic workers through a mandatory contract have so far
fallen short, with the contracts proving difficult or
impossible to enforce. GOK enforcement officials acknowledge
unscrupulous practices at domestic recruitment offices, but
express frustration that they lack the legal tools,
resources, and high-level attention to make an impact. One
key enforcement official claimed that bureaucracy rather than
opposition to change explains the lack of progress even on
issues that enjoy broad GOK support such as a shelter for
abused workers. Source country embassies lauded recent GOK
efforts to break up prostitution dens that employ primarily
former domestic workers, but said that the criminals and
victims were being deported rather than dealt with by the
legal system. A Kuwaiti MOI official at a conference on
violence against women called for improvements in the way
police and medical workers deal with prostitutes and female
victims of physical abuse. End Summary.


2. (SBU) The GOK has made progress in recognizing the
special nature of the problems faced by domestic workers
here, and has taken some steps over the past year to address
them. Significant recent actions include initiating an
awareness campaign and implementing a standardized contract
for all domestic laborers that forbids employers from passing
administrative and recruitment fees on to workers and lays
out minimum standards for pay, rest, and other conditions of
work. However, recent discussions with GOK officials and key
contacts indicate little impact on the ground to date.
Bureaucracy rather than hardened opposition appears to be the
main obstacle to progress.

Kuwaiti Embassy in Indonesia not Enforcing Contract
-------------- --------------


3. (C/NF) Late in 2006, the Kuwaiti MFA instructed its
embassies abroad to interview every domestic work visa
applicant to verify that the worker had signed a new Kuwaiti
Government-approved standard contract and that the worker had
not paid unlawful fees in order to secure a job in Kuwait
(ref C). The interviews were part of the Government's
attempt to enforce the standardized domestic workers contract
that went into effect October 1, 2006. However, there is
little evidence to date indicating the new policy is having
an effect on the ground.


4. (C/NF) Kuwaiti Ambassador to Indonesia Muhammad Khalaf
told PolOff recently that his Embassy had stopped
interviewing Indonesian applicants for domestic worker visas
because these interviews were not serving their intended
purpose. When the interview policy went into effect, some
250 to 300 applicants began converging on the Kuwaiti embassy
in Jakarta every day, but Khalaf said his staff was only able
to process about 40 daily. The Kuwaiti MFA offered to rent a
separate building in Jakarta for the onslaught of new
consular work and to send another consular officer. Khalaf
rejected the offer because he said that the domestic worker
recruiters (both Indonesian and Kuwaiti) quickly figured out
what the Kuwaiti embassy was looking for and began coaching
their clients. Khalaf concluded that the extra work involved
was not solving any problems and effective enforcement had to
come in Kuwait. He informed the MFA that he would not
continue the interviews. He told PolOff that he had met with
MFA and Ministry of Interior (MOI) officials recently to
discuss what he viewed as their failure to anticipate the
problems facing implementation of the new contract.
Officials from the Filipino Overseas Workers Administration
told PolOff that as far as they knew the interviews continued
to take place in the Philippines.

Interior Ministry Official Sees Need for Changes
-------------- ---


5. (C/NF) In a February 4 meeting, the senior Kuwaiti MOI
official responsible for domestic worker affairs, Assistant
Undersecretary for Passport and Citizenship Affairs Shaykh

KUWAIT 00000239 002.3 OF 004


Ahmad Al-Nawwaf Al-Sabah, told PolCouns and PolOff that he
was aware of the difficulties faced by Kuwait embassies
abroad and that the MFA was working on solutions. He said it
has become apparent to him in his short time in office that
many of the procedures and laws in Kuwait regarding domestic
workers were in need of change. He was aware that a
government-administered shelter has been proposed and
expressed support for it. Shaykh Ahmad asked Poloff to meet
with the head of the MOI's Domestic Workers Administration
(DWA),whom he said would cooperate fully in providing
information on the shelter and enforcement of the domestic
contract.

Domestic Worker Administration Head Tells All
--------------


6. (C/NF) On February 6 PolOff visited the DWA, where its
Director, Colonel Adeeb Sweidan, said he would speak more
frankly than in past meetings at Shaykh Ahmad's direction.
Four months since the imposition of the contract, Sweidan
said that the DWA has taken no enforcement measures and
doubted they would do so any time soon. This contrasts with
a November meeting in which Sweidan said the DWA would
blacklist and/or impose administrative punishments on
employers who broke the terms of the new contract.


7. (C/NF) Sweidan said the Kuwaiti law governing licensing
of domestic labor agencies contains sufficient legal
protections to ensure the rights of the workers and their
employers, but that his office lacked the resources to
enforce it, and the domestic labor agencies operate
unchecked. He described what he said was their scheme for
exploiting a loophole in Kuwaiti law to profit from domestic
workers. The law stipulates that agencies provide a
six-month money-back guarantee on domestic workers if the
employer is bringing a worker from his or her own country to
Kuwait. If the agency provides a worker who is already in
Kuwait but has for some reason left the employer who
originally sponsored her, the agency need not provide a
guarantee. So agencies hire out workers who are already in
Kuwait and whom they know are likely to be returned (Sweidan
said sometimes the agency knows the worker is inept,
unpleasant, or disgruntled, and sometimes they actually
instruct her to sabotage her work). When the employer
returns the worker to the agency and asks for the fee back,
the agency refuses to take the worker back. The employer
then has to choose between firing the worker and losing the
entire fee or returning the worker for only a partial refund.
Employers inevitably choose the latter and the agency earns
a profit, which according to Sweidan and other sources,
ranges from 50 - 200 Dinars (USD 175 - 700). The problem
with this arrangement, according to Sweidan and the
source-country embassies, is that workers face more problems
when they are shuttled around to many different households.
Sweidan's description of this scam corroborates other
accounts (ref B),though the extent of the problem is not
known.


8. (C/NF) PolOff noted that the GOK claimed to have shut
down several hundred domestic labor agencies for various
violations. Sweidan responded that none had been shut down
for shady practices; rather, they had all been shut down on
technicalities such as not renewing or using their licenses.
He said he had found another technicality that would enable
him to shut down agencies and that he would be forming a team
to pursue this avenue. However, he emphasized that he has
not and could not shut down agencies for the kinds of
dealings described above. The head of the Kuwait Union for
Domestic Labor Offices, Abdul Aziz Al-Ali, defended his
industry, telling PolOff that the problem was the Domestic
Workers Administration, which did not pursue workers' claims
sufficiently.

Bureaucracy Slows Progress on Domestic Worker Issues
-------------- --------------


9. (C/NF) Sweidan said he had a great deal of confidence in
Assistant Undersecretary Shaykh Ahmad Nawwaf's leadership but
that he was distracted by other issues (especially the
Bidoon, which is the highest profile human rights issue in
Kuwait) and suffers from an ineffective staff. Sweidan also
complained that the MOI's Department of Immigration, which is
one of a number of departments under Shaykh Ahmad's purview

KUWAIT 00000239 003 OF 004


and which directly oversees the DWA, pays little or no
attention to the issue of domestic workers. Sweidan
concluded that the problem was not opposition to making
necessary changes but simply bureaucratic inertia and a lack
of high-level attention. He recognized the significant
effort of the USG to bring about change, but recommended that
it push harder, especially in private meetings with MOI
officials.

Shelter Not Imminent
--------------


10. (C/NF) Colonel Sweidan said he was an enthusiastic
supporter of a Government-supervised shelter for domestic
workers. He said it originally encountered resistance due to
budget concerns, but the Kuwait Union of Domestic Labor
Offices then offered to fund it and the MOI even approved two
houses they had prepared to be used as the shelter. Then a
legal dispute arose between two factions of KUDLO in 2004 and
matters slowed down. Sweidan said that as far as he knew
there had been no progress on the shelter but that the idea
enjoyed support throughout the upper and lower ranks of the
relevant GOK government ministries (MOI and the Ministry of
Social Affairs and Labor).

Prostitution Rings
--------------


11. (C/NF) Over the past several months local newspapers
have reported on dozens of raids on brothels where runaway
housemaids work as prostitutes. The Embassy gathered
together the labor attaches from most of the major
labor-sending-country embassies -- Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri
Lanka, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Egypt -- on February 7
to exchange views on these raids and other issues related to
foreign workers. They acknowledged that the new domestic
labor contract was a positive step but said it was too early
to judge its effect. They praised the campaign of brothel
busts. They complained, however, that the GOK was deporting
those involved -- both the alleged facilitators and willing
or unwilling prostitutes -- before cases could be filed.
This is typical of Kuwait's approach to foreigners who get in
legal trouble. Unless it is a serious physical crime, the
Government prefers to come to an out-of-court settlement in
minor cases like non-payment of salary or to deport accused
criminals rather than prosecute and jail them. The head of
the Criminal Investigation Department, General Abdul Hameed
Al-Awadhi, observed in a December 5 meeting on the subject of
prostitution that this was a form of mercy by the GOK, since
deportation was better than prosecution and jail for the
women. The Bangladeshi labor attache, whose countrymen are
accused of running the rings, said that Bangladeshis are
merely custodians or guards at the houses. He sees the
accusations and subsequent deportations as a way of shielding
the Kuwaiti owners of the houses (Note: non-Kuwaitis are not
allowed to own property in Kuwait).


12. (U) The GOK held a conference from February 10 - 12 on
"Violence Against Women." EmbOff attended one of the
sessions on February 11, at which Adel Ibrahim, Director of
Felony and Police Research at the MOI, pointed to weaknesses
in Kuwait's system of dealing with rape and prostitution. He
confirmed the complaint of many source country embassies that
the staff at hospitals and police stations often treat such
cases inappropriately and that social workers should be
assigned to these places. He called for the quick
establishment of a shelter like the one in Bahrain or Qatar.
Finally, he noted that many of the prostitutes are runaway
domestic workers. A woman in the audience stood up and told
of a domestic worker she hired who was crying constantly and
saying she wanted to go home. The woman brought her back to
the agency, which convinced the woman it had resolved the
problem. Soon after, the worker ran away from the house.
Two months later, the woman received a call from the DWA
asking her to provide funds for a ticket home for the worker,
who had been rounded up in a prostitution "den." Ibrahim
said the transfer of maids, many of whom were advertised for
"sale" in classified newspapers, was a serious problem and
that the practice should be banned.

GOK Will Detail Its Efforts to Protect Domestic Workers
-------------- --------------


KUWAIT 00000239 004 OF 004



13. (SBU) Post has requested further information from the
GOK on these issues. The MFA informed Post that the
committee charged with responding to international human
rights reports was preparing information and would provide it
to post as soon as possible.

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