A young woman, who escaped from bonded labour in Saudi Arabia and is back home in Ghana, has relived her torment during her stay in that country on Accra FM Friday January 15, 2016.
Millicent Acheampong (name withheld), from Asamankese, worked as a dispensing chemist until she was talked into going to work as a farm hand in Canada by a travel agent she met through a friend.
Millicent said despite advice from her husband not to travel, she made the journey after making some undisclosed payments to the said agent.
According to her, she received her passport and visa from the agent on the day of her flight in March 2015 at the Kotoka International Airport, who advised her not to open the travel documents until she got to her destination.
Millicent said after touching down in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from Accra, she was informed by her agent that there had been a sudden change in arrangements, for which reason she would be flown to Saudi Arabia, rather than to North America.
After arriving at an airport in Saudi Arabia, she realised she had been sold off to another agent, as her Ghanaian agent was nowhere to be found and another agent, who came for her, seized her passport.
During her one-month stay in the Middle East, Millicent explained that she lived with a Saudi family as a servant, where she slept only two hours a day on the bare floor of a kitchen’s storeroom, working 22 hours without salary and food. She only had water to drink while her only source of food in Saudi Arabia, she recollected, were her hosts’ leftovers.
After re-establishing contact with her agent and demanding to be sent back home, Millicent stated that she was asked to pay GHS 8,200 to have her freedom back.
But unable to raise the amount, she remained in the Arabian country, confined to the walls of her home where she was prohibited from going out.
However, she earned her escape a little over a month into her servitude in Saudi Arabia, when her Saudi hostess, a middle-aged woman, left home for hospital, forgetting to lock the gate. Millicent said she fled – an act which would have guaranteed her death had she been caught by her hosts – from the house to a far-off bus stop where some kind Saudi passengers offered to pay her bus fare and assist her with directions to the compound of a UN official in the town, whom she had secretly been speaking with on phone as she plotted her escape.
She recounted the numerous abuses suffered by many Ghanaians, who are trafficked to work in bondage in Saudi Arabia, some of whom were as young as 17 while others slaved away in their 40s.
She also gave accounts of persons, who take flight from their residences to seek police help at airports only to be returned to their hosts by the police. She said she had seen photos of some Ghanaians shot to death in the back for attempting to escape while others got killed by being pushed down from the upper floors of storey buildings. She said many individuals living under such conditions have no means of contacting their families as their phones are seized.
Millicent said after a month’s ordeal in the Gulf, she has returned to her job of selling medication over the counter, and is cautioning persons desperate to leave the shores of the country to be wary of persons, who come to them with get-rich-quick jobs abroad.
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