“We are happy that the Saudi authorities have expressed willingness to cooperate in the investigation to track down the Saudi sponsor who was alleged to have tortured his domestic aide by hammering metal into her body,” Kingsley Ranawake, chairman of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE), told Arab News.
X-rays conducted at the Kamburupitiya hospital in Sri Lanka have shown 24 nails and needles in the body of 49-year-old domestic aide L.T. Ariyawathi, who says the couple she worked for in Saudi Arabia hammered them into her body.
L.G. Ariyawathi was hospitalized after she complained of severe pain after returning to her country two weeks ago from Saudi Arabia. Her still unnamed employers allegedly punished her by heating the nails and needles before sticking them into her when she complained of too heavy workload.
Last Friday, doctors removed some of the 13 nails and five needles from her legs and forehead.
The news comes after anonymous sources at the Interior Ministry on Monday denied news reports the Saudi couple blamed for the sadistic torture of 49-year-old domestic aide L.T. Ariyawathi were in custody. Sources from the Saudi Embassy in Colombo who did not want to be named said the Saudi government would issue a formal statement soon.
Ranawake arrived in Riyadh on Monday as part of a three-member delegation to meet Saudi officials and his countrymen. The other members of the delegation are SLBFE Additional General Manager L.K. Ruhunuge and Kirthi Muttukumarana, SLBFE manager for legal affairs.
SLBFE is the governmental organization in Sri Lanka that looks after the welfare of its overseas workers. It’s a statutory requirement in Sri Lanka for all workers who go abroad to be registered with the bureau.
The chairman met with the head of the Saudi Arabian National Committee For Recruitment Saad Al-Baddah on Tuesday.
The visiting official said that although the incident did not reflect the image of the country, action should be taken against the employer concerned to avoid such recurrences.
“We also anticipate that the maid should be suitably compensated for the traumatic experience which has affected her both mentally and physically,” he said. “We are here to discuss with our counterparts the introduction of a new set of recruitment procedures and conditions between the two countries.”
The delegation will visit Dammam and Jeddah to meet the Lankan workers to get apprised of their grievances.
The chairman also visited the company on Tuesday that has 29 stranded Lankan women workers. Since March this year, these women who came as cleaners for a hospital project were simply kept in the accommodation without their jobs. The local agent had recruited the workers for another cleaning company, which is unable to deploy the workers since it has a dispute with the hospital concerned.
“The company agreed to send the workers home by the next available flight,” the chairman said, pointing out that the Sri Lankan Embassy is making the reservations for their repatriation home on Wednesday.
About 1.5 million Sri Lankans work abroad, many as maids or drivers, in order to earn more than they can in their own impoverished country. Nearly 400,000 of these work in Saudi Arabia alone.