Domestics Dump Sponsors while on Holiday in London

DUBAI - Summer holidays are the much-awaited break longed for by the UAE citizens and residents specially when mercury soars and many of them take the opportunity to cool off in exotic locations. The United Kingdom has always been a preferred destination with many local families owning large properties there, so the number of people moving to places like London are a common feature during this time of the year.

But what is becoming a matter of grave concern for the local families who like to move in to London with their domestic helpers like housemaids, cooks ... etc for a couple of months during this time, is that many of their staff are running away, quietly and insidiously.

They just run away in the hope of building a new future in a new country. While many do find lucrative jobs and get their new employers (UK nationals or those who have acquired UK nationality) to regularise their papers and change their status from an illegal worker to a legitimate one, others fall in the trap of illegal trafficking.

This phenomenon might have started many years ago, with a handful of domestic workers, Sri Lankans, Filipinos, Indonesians, Ethiopians, Indians disappearing whenever they travel overseas with their employers, but over a period of time, their numbers have increased by the dozen.

There are now instances of many UAE nationals who complain that there is an increasing number of maids and other domestic workers who absconded while accompanying them to the UK.

"Whenever we take a maid with us on holidays overseas, we know for sure that she will not return with us," said Mariam Othman, a UAE national and the Director of the Rashid Paediatric Therapy Centre. "It is becoming a very common thing," Mrs Othman has faced it twice.

Once, when she had travelled with a Filipina maid and stayed in a hotel, the maid had become friendly with the cleaners and the house-keeping staff of the hotel. "I knew that the maid was talking and exchanging telephone numbers with people of her own nationality working at the hotel." Mrs Othman also hinted at a network being in operation who try and lure these overseas domestic workers. It is suspected that there are undercover agents who get commission for the services rendered. A day before they were scheduled to return to the UAE, Mrs Othman and her family woke up to discover that the maid had disappeared.

In another instance, her Sri Lankan maid had been accompanying her on one of the holidays. "I left her with the kids at a nearby cafe while I was shopping in the same mall. She met someone from her same nationality and entered into lengthy conversation with her." The next thing she knew that the maid had run away, and in both cases she had reported the incidents to the authorities abroad, but she never got any response.

But despite all the inconvenience and trouble she faced when the previous maids ran away, she still intends to take one with her on her next trip soon. "With small kids around, it is a must to have a domestic helper with us. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to enjoy the holiday. However, families who have no kids can do without such inconveniences."

Many local families realise that by taking their Filipino, Sri Lankan or Indian maids along, they are helping them fulfil their dreams. Although such a situation spells disaster for many families, they still take the risk for the sake of their children.

A UAE national woman identified as W.A. has a similar story to narrate. "I took my Filipina maid to London and one day she left my small kid in the bathroom and ran away and we never found her although the matter was reported to the local authorities there. There are agents who wait for these domestic overseas workers to lure them with offers to work in pubs, bars and restaurants and in the menial works which the citizens there refrain from doing.

The embassy's spokesperson in Dubai, however, clarified that there were no imminent plans yet to impose any guarantee on the UAE nationals for taking their maids to the UK. It is expected that the domestic worker will be provided with accommodation, food, and will be paid a salary by the employers who will take them from here. They are otherwise not entitled to any access to the UK Public Fund that provides insurance against health hazards, unemployment and social security.

Upon return to the UAE, the families whose domestic helpers ran away have to report them absconding with the naturalisation and residency departments concerned, in order to be allowed to bring in a replacement, explained Colonel Abdullah Hassan, Assistant Director of Dubai Naturalisation and Residency Department.

"We are aware of this phenomenon. It is probably a network run by a special Mafia that lure the foreign housemaids and encourage them to abandon the families sponsoring them," he observed, adding that the DNRD does not follow-up on the status of these domestic helpers with the embassies of the countries where they disappeared.

"We just include their names in our blacklist and ban them from re-entering the country," he said.

Many of these maids in fact, opt to return to the UAE when their dreams crash on the rock of reality and when they find themselves in a country without legal papers, without jobs and loads of disappointment. According to Mrs Othman, her second runaway maid, did call her asking her for forgiveness and pleading to come back "but I can't trust her any more," she said.

EMBASSY AWARE OF RUNAWAY PROBLEM

An official spokesperson of the UK Embassy in Dubai said that 3,577 visas had been issued for domestic workers accompanying their UAE national employers during the last two years, signifying that there is a substantial number of workers who travel to the UK every year and contemplate the idea of running away to get better jobs and a greater security.

Whether the runaway worker is able to get better employment and legalise their papers is another issue altogether since it is the jurisdiction of the Home Office in the UK, who decides on a case to case basis whether the runaway maid's papers can be legalised by another employer, the spokesperson said.

But if an absconding worker is found working illegally in the UK, the most likely action that he/she would face would be deportation.

Noting that the embassy is aware of such occurrences, the spokesperson at the UK Embassy said: "Unfortunately UAE nationals who have had their maids absconding from the UK have not reported the matter to the UK Embassy here, which would have been the logical course of action. So far there had been no officially registered complaints by UAE nationals here about their runaway domestic workers."