"Cambodians weigh up risks of working in Kuwait", 28 November 2018

Ary Ramsan wipes away tears as she recalls her time working as a housemaid in Saudi Arabia…

"They sent me to a family with 11 children. I worked for 15 to 16 hours per day, and I wasn't paid anything," she told ucanews.com.

… "I told my Saudi employer that I wanted to go home, that I had done enough work to pay for a plane ticket back to Cambodia. But the employer told me it wasn't enough yet. He forced me to sleep with him. He raped me several times," Ary Ramsan said.

Her story shows why many people have misgivings after the Cambodian and Kuwaiti governments announced … that Cambodia will send about 5,000 workers to Kuwait next year following an agreement made in 2009…

The Cambodian government seems convinced that sending 5,000 workers in 2019 shouldn't be a problem... Minister of Labor Ith Samheng said they will be protected by the memorandum of understanding...

Zaher M. Al-Khuraineg, counselor of the Kuwait embassy in Phnom Penh, gave an assurance that Cambodian workers had nothing to worry about... Amnesty International said in its most recent report that "migrant workers continue to face exploitation and abuse" under the controversial kafala system,...

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported … that the kafala system can force workers to remain with abusive employers. Workers that try to flee can be arrested, fined, imprisoned for up to six months, deported and barred from returning to Kuwait for at least six years…