Officials from the Labour and Amerindian Affairs ministries accompanied by the police yesterday swooped down on the Alberttown, Georgetown home of a city businessman and rescued a worker who was being held in the man’s home against her will.
Reports are that shortly after lunch yesterday, officials from the two agencies and a police officer arrived at the businessman’s home and questioned him about the whereabouts of the 20-year-old woman, who he had employed a maid some three months ago. After some reluctance, the man led the officials into the home, where the young woman was found. She was later taken to the Alberttown Police Station accompanied by the ministry officials and gave statements to officers there.
According to reports, earlier this week, a neighbour was told that the young woman, who is mother of a six-month-old boy, wanted to leave her employer’s home but was being kept against her will, until he found someone to replace her.
The woman’s plight came to light some time last month, when she told a labourer hired by the businessman that she was not allowed to leave the house and she was denied access to a phone. Her employers, she said, would leave her locked in the house and they would also lock away the landline phones in a room. She told another of the man’s employees that the businessman and his wife would verbally abuse her as well as force her to work up until midnight most nights, cleaning the house and washing wares. She would be taken to clean other properties in the city which the man owned and she was not allowed to communicate with anyone during this time.
The woman was in possession of a mobile phone when she was employed. However, her mother had called and the two spoke in their tribal language, which prompted her employers to physically and verbally abuse her. The man’s wife demanded that she explain what she had told her mother. It was after this episode that her mobile phone was taken away from her. In the interim, she would sneak calls to her family, borrowing the phones of labourers who were employed with the man. Late last week, the woman began to confide in a neighbour, who informed the Amerindian Affairs Ministry of her plight earlier this week.
‘Needed help’
She communicated with the neighbour through a compartment of the house that she was not allowed to leave and that she was depressed since she did not know who to turn to as her parents, who live in the Mahaicony area, could not assist her. The neighbour told Stabroek News yesterday that the young woman needed help, and that she had started to sneak her belongings out of the house for safekeeping.
The neighbour said the woman related that she had not been paid since six weeks back, when she informed her employers that she wanted to leave the job. She said the woman responded to a newspaper advertisement for a live-in maid and travelled to the city some time later.
According to the neighbour, the situation became extreme last week when the businessman returned home in the absence of his wife to spend the afternoon at home. She said woman related that her employer was in a small room in a section of the building looking at television and he called her to join him. The woman refused the offer and told the man that she “never looked at blues [pornography] before” and that “she respect herself”. She said the man told the woman that “respect does not have anything to do with it” but the woman returned to her room. The businessman later told the girl to leave her room open at night and the neighbour said she found the man’s explanation that he needed to gain access to the woman’s room to get to his office, as puzzling.
She said on Wednesday the man again returned home during the day and told the girl that he was unwell and asked her to “rub his foot”. The man subsequently emerged from his room in his underwear and the young woman advised him that he should call a doctor instead. However, out of fear, she subsequently acted on his instructions, following which she was paid $1,500 and told to not to tell anyone. Early yesterday, in tears, the woman related to the neighbour that she could not continue to live in the house and that she wanted to “get away.”
The neighbour said that a call was placed to the Labour Ministry yesterday and officials there stated that the agency was going to immediately act on the matter. Around 1 pm yesterday, the neighbour said, the police and the two government officials approached the businessman who informed them, in the presence of the police and onlookers, that “them only wasting them time.”
She said one of officers stated that the businessman was no stranger to hiring persons from the interior and having them work under difficult conditions.
At the Alberttown Police Station yesterday, police were taking statements from the teary-eyed woman, in the presence of the officials from the Labour and Amerindian Affairs ministries. Later, she was taken to a hospital in the city to undergo tests.
The Amerindian Affairs Ministry was making arrangements to place her in a safe house.
It is unclear if any criminal charges would be laid against the businessman but a Labour Ministry official confirmed yesterday that the matter was being investigated by the two government agencies.