Lack of laws condemns Kenyan job-seekers to slavery

File Number Traffic/27/2005 gathers dust at the offices of Fida Kenya. It hasn’t been opened since 2005 after its subject went missing.

A few kilometres away, another file on the same subject is open. The Kenya police seeks her to answer charges of theft by servant.

“We don’t know what happened to her,” says Alice Maranga, the head of Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida) Kenya’s awareness programme.

“Her former employer had threatened her. Unknown people kept stalking her. Then she disappeared without trace; we don’t know where she went or what happened to her.”

Lucy (for legal reasons, we cannot use her real name without her consent), a Kenyan single mother of two, became hunted soon after she bolted from virtual slavery in Germany, where she had worked as a house-help.

An expatriate doctor in Kenya had employed her to look after her ageing parents back home in Germany, with promises of a huge salary and good working conditions.

However, the employer seized her passport as she arrived in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, even before she got to her destination.

Inhuman treatment

In Germany, Lucy was “confined and subjected to inhuman treatment by being overworked and underfed” until she got sick, according to Fida’s annual report for 2005.

“The neighbours secretly provided her with food,” Ms Maranga says.

One day, Lucy got sick and the medication by her employer, a doctor, worsened her situation.

When she complained, the employer threatened to make life difficult for her. With the help from her German neighbours, she escaped and contacted Fida and a German-based NGO, who helped her return home.

Her former German employer immediately “filed a theft case against (her) and swore an affidavit in Kenya”. The expatriate sought to recoup all the money she spent on Lucy, including wages and the air fare.

Suddenly, Lucy turned from being a victim of slavery to a target of the Kenya police. And this was hardly surprising.

The Kenyan law recognises “theft by servant” and hardly human trafficking, a crime that could attract life imprisonment if a draft Bill forwarded to the Attorney-General last month becomes law.