In the first nine months of the year, detectives from the Ministry of Interior (MoI) had arrested 150 members of various expatriate gangs who were indulging in maid trade.
The MoI along with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been intensifying efforts in recent months to improve the image of Kuwait in the fields of human rights and human trafficking. The MoI with help from the General Directorate of Residency Investigation monitored the gangs involved in trading in maids, which resulted in the arrests of several members, most of whom were Asian expatriates.
The investigations revealed that the gang members, who opened fake domestic worker recruitment offices, incited Asian maids to run away from their sponsors and then sold them to new sponsors for a hefty fee. Investigators, had been monitoring the gangs for sometime, said that the human-trafficking activities of these gangs peaked before the holy month of Ramadan.
The arrested members have since been deported from the country and have been blacklisted to prevent them from re-entering Kuwait again. Also, the maids who escaped from their original sponsor have been placed in detention.
Sources at MoI confirmed that over the past three years more than 1,800 men accused of trading in maids had been arrested. Official records show that those arrested and deported for violating the Domestic Workers Act has come down from increased pressure by the authorities on such activities. From a total of 860 people who were arrested and deported for infringing the Domestic Workers Act in 2016, the numbers dropped to 520 violations in 2017 and 420 violations in 2018.
In addition to physical ‘fake’ offices, these maid traders have also taken to social media sites to promote and ply their nefarious business. The authorities have so far shut down more than 700 such sites on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.
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