Over 250 Ugandan women held, tortured in Kuwait

By Steven Candia          
                    
The ministry of internal affairs has written to the ministry of foreign affairs over the plight of about 250 Ugandan women said to be detained in various camps in Kuwait in their attempt to flee torture.

 The internal affairs ministry took up the issues with their foreign affairs counterparts basing on the accounts of relatives of some of the women trapped there after they were lured. The women claim to have been lured with promises of lucrative jobs in supermarkets only to end up as housemaids and abused.

“We are asking them to link up with Kuwait so that we can know whether they have such a number of Ugandan women detained there, where they are, what are the reasons and what is required to secure their release,” Moses Binoga, the coordinator prevention of trafficking in person’s task force (PTIPTF) in the ministry of internal affairs said on Wednesday.  

The letter, he said, was written yesterday and also copied to the director of the International Police (Interpol) Uganda bureau.

The letter he said was written by the permanent secretary internal affairs and addressed to his counterpart in foreign affairs. Attempts to get comment from the PS foreign affairs Ambassador James Mugume were futile.

The development comes after relatives of the detained women met Binoga on Tuesday, saying their daughters called them while they were still at the reception centre before they were transferred to another facility.

“We are relying on what the relatives of the victims told us and that is what we want to verify,” Binoga said.

Most of the trafficked girls were promised juicy jobs in supermarkets but ended up enslaved in homes as maids.