Sondos Al Qattan, a Kuwaiti beauty blogger and social media star, received criticisms after she posted online a video of her complaints about the reforms on the kafala system which now allows Filipino domestic workers to have the right to days off and possession of their own passports.
According to a report by CNN, Al Qattan, who has over 2.3 million followers on Instagram, ranted on social media and questioned the Kuwaiti government’s decision saying that she doesn’t agree with the new regulations.
“The new laws that have been passed are pathetic,” the Internet celebrity said in Arabic.
“For [a maid] to take a day off every week, that’s four days a month. Those are the days that she’ll be out and we don’t know what she’ll be doing on those days, with her passport on her,” she added.
She also said that maids should not keep their passports because they might run away. And if they do, no one will refund the money she paid for the household helper’s services.
“I don’t want a Filipino maid anymore,” she said in the video.
Al Qattan sparked online uproar with many netizens accusing her of “promoting slavery”.
After Al Qattan’s video went viral online, OFW group Migrante International demanded a public apology from the social media star.
In a joint statement with the Association of Domestic Helpers in the Middle East, Migrante said that Al Qattan should “offer public apology and genuinely express remorse for her disgusting statements.”
“It would also be more valuable to her if she can visit the Philippines to witness for herself the appalling poverty that grips many Filipino families and find out what hardships OFWs had to go through in government agencies before they can finally be deployed abroad,” the statement added.
Migrante also tagged Al Qattan as a “slave-owner” who “exhibits intoxication in her overinflated ego and false sense of superiority.”
“At a time when many all over the world are going to and fro online to acquire knowledge and access more information, Sondos should have known by now that workers have rights too and they deserve just and humane treatment from their employers,” said Migrante.
“Instead, Sondos continues to cling to a backward outlook which literally belongs to the dark ages,” the statement added.
The Philippines and Kuwait have worked on several agreements and reforms that will protect overseas Filipino workers in the Gulf country following the death of Joanna Demafelis, the Filipino domestic helper whose body was found inside a freezer inside an abandoned apartment.
