A Nepalese Housemaid Pays Her 2 Months Salary In Charity

2018-Apr-07

 The story I am going to share is a unique one and is now close to my heart since I have read it, it has touched me hard. It is a story of a Nepalese woman who came to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 10 years ago.
 The women named Gangamaya Kumal stepped into the city of Taif as a housemaid in 2008. She belonged to remote areas of Nepal and came here to work and change life of her family. Yet the destiny was not kind to her. At the time when she came here, she never knew what was waiting for her.
 Kumal, who is now 45 years old, narrates that in 10 years she has not once visited her family back in Nepal. She was not given a day off by her sponsor. She would only work and would not take a single day off.
 She begged her sponsor to let her go for a leave when her husband and father died back in Nepal, yet the brutal family did not allow her to go and attend the funeral of her beloveds.
 Also during the decade long stay, an earthquake hit her hometown and the mud-house got into its rips and broke apart. She wasn’t allowed to go back and condole her family at that time also.
 She was completely secluded from the rest of the world as her sponsor had taken away her cell-phone and did not attend calls that came to him on his phone.  The only people she could talk with or socialize with were the family members she was working for.
 
 What broke my heart really bad was the fact that since a decade, the lady wasn’t paid. Kumal claims that she was hired for SR 500 a month only yet she had never seen a riyal note nor touched it.
 The sponsor claimed that he had send her salary for 3 years and 4 months to her family. This means that she had remain unpaid since the last 6 years and 8 months! Kumal had worked without a day off and never received a penny for it! This is sad, I don’t know how people can become so inhumane!
 Kumal prayed for escape every-day, yet her prayers were only listened after a decade when luckily she had to accompany her sponsor to the Nepalese consulate located in Jeddah to get her passport renewed.
 The officials got surprised by the fact the women had never flown back to her country. On their questioning, the matter opened. The Nepalese consultant helped her lodge a complaint in Taif. Her pending wages were calculated as SR 30,196.
 This is all she earned in 6 years and 8 months! Her medical and other expenses were deducted by her sponsor. She donated her two months’ salary to an under-privileged in Taif. Wow, this is what I call a pure example of humanity!
 She was at the shelter house provided by the consulate of Nepal and is ready to leave for Nepal. Challenges awaits her there. She needs to get her mud-house rebuilt and has to get her daughter married.
 I plea the government of Saudi Arabia to make an effort to regulate the rights of maids and workers. I hope we provide others such housemaids with justice as well and hope that the system becomes so clear that injustice is not done in future!
 Source: Saudi Gazette