AMMAN — Three violent crimes committed by domestic helpers against members of their
employers’ household took place in the past five years, underlining a defective
process for the hired help, activists argued.
اضافة اعلان
The last incident of its kind was on Friday morning,
when an Ethiopian housekeeper stabbed a woman and her daughter in their Amman
home. The spokesperson of the
Public Security Directorate (PSD) said the
daughter died of her wounds soon after arriving at the hospital, but that her
mother remains under medical supervision in a critical condition.
Human rights activist Emad Al-Sharqawi, said that
dozens of similar crimes took place in the past few years, so the Friday
manslaughter “is not an isolated incident”.
“Recruitment offices for domestic helpers bring in
unqualified and untrained workers from various parts of the world, without
undergoing a background check,” he told
Jordan News.
The
Ministry of Labor did not answer repeated calls
by
Jordan News for comment.
Sharqawi said another reason is that the hired help
“may not be suitable to work in a household environment in Jordan”.
A crime cannot be justified, Sharqawi insisted, but
to reveal the reasons in each incident, it is important to revisit the
recruitment process.
“Recruitment offices do not check the criminal record
of the worker in his, or her native country,” he pointed out.
“They do not ask the worker for any form of
certificates or documents to ensure that they have not committed an offense
back home before bringing them to the country, and having them settle in with
... families in Jordan,” he explained.
In some cases, the recruited domestic helper turned
out to be a man who posed as a woman when he applied at the recruitment agency
in his home country, according to Sharqawi.
“The recruitment process is dysfunctional to that
extent,” he stressed. “There is no verification of the workers’ qualifications,
training, criminal record, and even gender in some cases.”
Tariq Al-Nouti, vice president of the Domestic
Helpers Recruitment Agencies Association, said that firms follow the law to the
letter and spirit.
He insisted that background checks are run. “Each
applicant attaches a no-criminal-record to the application, as required by the
Jordanian law,” Nouti said.
Notably, the criminal record certificate required is
equivalent to the one issued in Jordan for the purposes of employment, which
shows current lawsuits, or subpoenas, if any, but does not show the past
record.
“Regardless, domestic helpers go through a
meticulous process of health checkups and tests, as well as security background
check before arriving in Jordan”, he noted.
“The health checkups are redone in Jordan upon
arrival, too,” he explained. They include a thorough examination of all
infectious diseases, and other contagious ailments, as well as impeding
illnesses that may affect the workers’ ability to undertake their duties.
“The incident that took place last weekend pained us
all, and we feel for the victims and their families, but this is not a
frequently recurring incident,” he pointed out.
“This is not a phenomenon,” declared
Linda Al-Kalash, an executive director of Tamkeen for Legal Aid and Human Rights.
“The incident (last Friday) was like other crimes,
there were reasons and motives,” she told
Jordan News.
She pointed out that when addressing similar cases,
the “mental state of the perpetrator must be taken into account, plus a myriad
of other factors that drive a human being to kill another human being”.
According to Kalash, one of the issues that must be
addressed is the lack of information from both sides, the employer and the
worker, ahead of the recruitment. This includes the number people in the
household, the type of work required, and other aspects of the contract that
should be discussed and agreed on.
She said that worker abuse must also be taken into
consideration. “The cost of hiring a domestic helper is high, so some employers
take it as an investment and try to capitalize on it, one way or another, which
leads to abusing the worker in some cases,” Kalash explained.
Sometimes, workers become homesick, or are too tired
to keep up with the demands of a big household, or could not adapt to the
culture and their new home, which are all factors that put them under
tremendous pressure, she added.
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