A foreign housemaid, who desperately wants to return home to her family is in a fix, as the authorities at Riyadh Rescue Center, where she has been housed for over two months, are unable to establish her nationality. After working for three years with more than two sponsors in Riyadh, ‘Rajani Vishwanathan' was abandoned at the center without an Iqama (residence permit) or even the necessary travel document, the passport. However, ‘Rajani', whose real name is Kamaleswari, claims to be resident of Tamil Nadu, a southern Indian state and hence an Indian national. Runaway and/or abandoned housemaids are housed at the Rescue Center in Riyadh. Depending on the identification papers or travel documents the housemaids have, the Rescue Center informs the concerned embassies or sponsors to settle the matter and process their case either sending them to the deportation center to be sent back their countries or to work with sponsors. Since Kamaleswari carries no identification papers and her sponsor cannot be traced, the authorities have informed the concerned embassies and are waiting to confirm her nationality. The Federation of Keralite Associations in Saudi Arabia (Fokasa), an Indian social organization that reaches out to distressed Indians, spoke to Kamaleswari, who desperately wants someone to help her go home and join her family, which is comprised of her husband and two children, living at No. 1272, Venkatesh, P.S.K.Nagar P.O, Rajapalayam, Tamil Nadu, India. R. Muraleedharan, Fokasa president for Riyadh Province, said the abandoned housemaid while speaking in Tamil, a language spoken in Tamil Nadu and also in parts of Sri Lanka, disclosed that her name was Kamaleswari and that ‘Rajani' was the name given to her by the recruiting agent that sent her to Saudi Arabia. In September 2006, Kamaleswari received an offer to work as a housemaid in Saudi Arabia. Because of the Indian government's restriction that Indian women below the age of 40 cannot go abroad to work as maids, a family friend advised Kamaleswari to go to Saudi Arabia via Sri Lanka. “In search of greener pastures and to earn some extra money for my growing children, I decided to look for a housemaid's job in Saudi Arabia. But because I was under the stipulated age, I was asked to travel to Sri Lanka and board a plane to Saudi Arabia from there,” she is quoted as saying. Since she is illiterate, she could not read her passport details, and does not know whether the passport was Indian or Sri Lankan, Muraleedharan said. Under the Saudi sponsorship system, foreign workers upon arrival in the Kingdom must deposit their passports with the concerned sponsor/employer. “The loss of this important travel document landed her (Kamaleswari) in big trouble,” he added. Kamaleswari, an illiterate woman, does not know much about her passport or Iqama. It was also unclear as to how she arrived on a housemaid's visa to Saudi Arabia via Colombo Airport in Sri Lanka, which is known to require many formalities and have numerous immigration checks, Muraleedharan said. To prove her nationality status, Kamaleswari said she was born in India to an Indian father Perumal and a Sri Lankan mother Chinthapilla. She was named Kamaleswari. She said that since she was three months old, she has been a resident of Rajapalayam in Tamil Nadu. She was married to an Indian named Viswanathan. The couple have two children of minor age Manoj and Vijesh, which she can prove by means of her Indian ration card. “The Indian Embassy is helping to solve the nationality issue. Embassy officials traced the family and managed to obtain the ration card. But her two names ‘Rajani', allegedly given to her by the recruiting agent, and Kamaleswari, as mentioned on the Indian ration card, do not match and are a cause of concern for the Indian Embassy,” Muraleedharan said. He added that the voter's ID card, which bears the photograph of the holder, or a school leaving certificate could help her prove that she is an Indian citizen. He said Fokasa has managed to establish contacts with those who were supposedly the woman's sponsors but could not retrieve the passport from any of them. “The disappearance of the passport, which as per the sponsorship system in Saudi Arabia was deposited with one of the sponsors, is the cause of the problem,” he said. Foreign workers employed under the domestic helpers category are usually deprived of labor rights that govern foreign workers in Saudi Arabia. Another unfortunate part in Kamaleswari's life in Saudi Arabia was that she has not been paid for the work she has done. She worked with one sponsor for 12 months and was only paid for three, notwithstanding the fact that she was recruited at the meager monthly wage of SR500. After one year of work with one sponsor, Kamaleswari was handed over to another manpower provider agency in Riyadh where she worked for 18 months. Kamaleswari insisted that she should be allowed to go back home to her husband and children. When her sponsor abandoned her at the rescue center, she had no idea of the magnitude of the problem she was going to face, said Muraleedharan.
