The US State Department’s annual report on human trafficking 2012 has stated that illiterate and unskilled labour from countries like India “are subjected to forced labour and to a lesser extent, forced prostitution” in Saudi Arabia.
Thousands of men and women from India and other countries voluntarily travel to Saudi Arabia to work as domestic servants or other low-skilled labourers. Some of them subsequently “face conditions indicative of involuntary servitude, including non-payment of wages, long working hours without rest, deprivation of food, threats, physical or sexual abuse and restrictions on movement such as withholding of passports or confinement to the workplace”, the report states.
Saudi Arabia has one of the largest contingents of Indian migrant workers in the Arabian Gulf, a considerable number of which is from Andhra Pradesh. Women domestic workers go to the Gulf mainly from cities like Hyderabad, which is notorious for minor girl child marriages with elderly Arab nationals.