All About Kafala Labour System Scrapped By Saudi That Affected 2.3 Million Indians

Saudi Arabia this month confirmed it had abolished the controversial 50-year-old kafala labour sponsorship system reviled as 'modern-day slavery', allowing employers - called kafeel - inhuman levels of control over employees, including confiscating travel documents and deciding if and when they could change jobs, or even leave the country.

In some cases, such as Jacintha Mendonca - a 46-yeard-old nurse from Karnataka lured by the promise of a lucrative job in Qatar but trafficked to Saudi in 2016 - they might even be held for ransom; her kafeel demanded Rs 4.3 lakh. Her release was negotiated through diplomatic and legal channels.

Mendonca's experience was one of hard-luck horror stories involving young Indians drawn to the Gulf and the opportunity to earn in dinars or riyals, get rich quick, and come back home.

Now, however, such horrific incidents will not happen. At least, they have been made illegal - and so should not - in Saudi Arabia, as they already have in Israel and Bahrain.

It persists, in different guises, in Gulf countries like Kuwait, Omar, Lebanon, and Qatar.

Across these nations there are nearly 25 million foreign nationals living and toiling under their kafeel's thumb. Unsurprisingly, Indians make up the largest - around 7.5 million - group.

Saudi scraps kafala system

In June Saudi Arabia announced plans to scrap the system as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's 'Vision 2030' reforms - a multi-trillion-dollar plan to tidy up the country's image to attract foreign investment, particularly before global events, including the 2029 Asian Winter Games.

Around 13 million foreign workers, of whom 2.5 million are Indians, will benefit.

What is the kafala system?

Rolled out in the 1950s, it was meant to control the flow of skilled and unskilled foreign labour from India and other southeast Asian countries. This labour was crucial to building, literally, the Saudi economy, since many were put to work in the construction or manufacturing sectors.

To ensure the economy was not overrun by this cheap labour, all incoming workers were 'tied' to a kafeel, an individual or a company acting as that labourer's 'sponsor'. And the 'sponsor' was given unholy power over the foreign national; they controlled the labourer's life, including deciding where they might work and then steal wages, and even decide where they might live.

Worse, the labourer could not file an abuse charge without the abuser's permission, a provision that must surely have struck the then-Saudi administration as odd, if not outright impossible.

The system wasn't quite as bad for skilled or white-collar workers.

Unsurprisingly, the system was denounced by labour and human rights activists.

Kafala system perils

The International Labour Organization and other global agencies accused Gulf countries practicing the kafala system of permitting human trafficking under the guise of 'sponsorship'.

Women were obviously the worst affected. Rights groups have documented instances of sexual abuse by the kafeel. In 2017, for example, a Gujarat woman was forced into sexual slavery by her 'sponsor' in Saudi Arabia, before being brought back home by the Indian government.

In another example from the same year, a woman from Karnataka, taken to Saudi on the promise of a job paying Rs 1.5 lakh per month, was physically abused and thrown off the third floor of a building in the city of Dammam. The government had to step in again to save her.

Rights groups, including international agencies like Amnesty, say there are thousands of such cases, involving people from India, Nepal, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Ethiopia.

So why did Saudi scrap it?

International pressure played its part, as did reports by global non-profits and aid agencies, and disapproving feedback from potential foreign investors. Ultimately, however, it was a decision taken by the Crown Prince, and it was a decision prompted by Saudia Arabia's global ambitions.