New Delhi - The Indian government has banned the emigration of women under 30 as domestic help to several countries in order to check the possibility of their sexual exploitation, a newspaper reported Tuesday. The ban will apply to countries for which workers need to obtain emigration clearance from Indian authorities before leaving India, the Times of India reported.
These countries include the Gulf nations (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman) Malaysia, Syria, Jordan, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Thailand, Indonesia, Iraq, Brunei, Nigeria, Sudan and Libya.
"A ban has been imposed on grant of emigration clearance to women below 30 if they are seeking employment as housemaids or domestic workers in any ECR (emigration check required) country," Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury was quoted by the Times as saying. She was replying to a query in the Indian parliament on Monday.
According to government data, more than 500,000 people leave India for work every year while unofficial estimates put the figure at about a million. Many are women recruited as nurses and maids, usually from India's southern states like Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
Indian media regularly reports about lowly-paid Indian housemaids being physically and sexually abused by their employers. But complaints are rarely registered.
Chowdhury had recently visited Kuwait where she received a number of complaints from women who had been brought in as domestic help only to be forced into trafficking after their passports and visas were impounded by their employers.
She had consulted with India's Overseas Affairs Minister, Vyalar Ravi on the issue.
"Unscrupulous employers keep travel papers as guarantees and even threaten to hand over these women to the police if they do not comply by their instructions," an unnamed official told the paper.
"The women are usually ill-treated, paid low wages, starved, sexually exploited and mentally tortured," the official added.
