"Do anything, just get me out of here.” That's what Anil Kumar told his wife over the telephone last Friday. Kumar was speaking from the Al-Azar US air base in Iraq. It's a place he had no idea he would be in when he set off for Kuwait last December. It's also a place where he sometimes gets just one meal a day for his labour.
Days after four workers from Kollam, Kerala, came out with tales of beatings and abuse, more allegations of ill-treatment in US camps in Iraq have surfaced.
Kumar's family paid Rs 58,000 to an agent who had promised him a job in Kuwait. But they haven't seen a cent of what he is supposed to be earning. "He said he was told that his salary was regularly submitted in the bank. But we got no other details," says his mother Devaki Amma.
Unscrupulous agents (Kumar paid Kochi-based recruitment agency Amar International, a sub-agent of Jasfer International, Mumbai) who smuggle Indian workers into Iraq appear to have found good business partners in the US forces, who need cheap labour.
Gopalakrishnan, another man who's just returned from Iraq says there are many more Indians there than the government estimate of 1,300. The agency he went through alone claims to have sent 1,500. Gopalakrishnan, who wanted to go to Kuwait, was also tricked into going to Iraq. He says US soldiers treated him well, though when he returned home after six months of work, he just had $30 in his pocket.
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