Shady agencies cause of laborers’ woes – Workers shelter addition to Kuwait’s human rights record

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KUWAIT CITY, July 30, (KUNA): Due to its utter commitment to the issues of human rights, Kuwait had establish the foreign workers shelter as a measure to protect laborers from abuse.

The facility, founded in 2014 on a decision by the Cabinet and efforts by a number of government bodies, is the personification of Kuwait’s strive to uphold the rights of honest workers and laborers.

Director of the expatriate workers center Falah Al-Mutairi told KUNA that the shelter was established to protect laborers from being victims of human trafficking, noting that the facility mostly hosted housemaids who had been seriously abused by their sponsors. About 90 percent of the victims suffer from being brought to the country by shady agencies that took advantage of their needs, said Al-Mutairi.

He added that the shelter, which houses many facilities, had a capacity to host some 500 people. Currently there are 360 residents at the shelter, said the official. All services within the shelter are for free and the state covers the expenses, said the official, revealing that the annual operation budget of the shelter was at KD 1.7 million.

Moreover, Al-Mutairi said that the shelter offered expatriate workers to head back to their countries and also offered programs to reintegrate them back into their own societies.

The Kuwaiti official affirmed that the shelter, in cooperation with foreign embassies and international bodies, made its mission to ensure that foreigner workers in Kuwait received their rights through the rule of Kuwaiti law and globally accepted legislations and regulations.

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