The Guardian’s  of April 10th, 2017 published an article written by Emma Graham-Harrison on how West African migrants are being bought and sold openly in modern-day slave markets in Libya, survivors have told a UN agency helping them return home.

Trafficked people passing through Libya have previously reported violence, extortion and slave labour. But the new testimony from the International Organization for Migration suggests that the trade in human beings has become so normalised that people are being traded in public.

Today we are proposing another of the same but this time happening at the other end of the MENA region, i.e. in Bahrain. It is IBT that picked a certain hoo-hah that went almost unnoticed on Twitter and Instagram media.

Recruitment agencies in the GCC countries are a good business line that is fundamentally geared to providing a service to national and locally domiciled international populations by providing various types of house maids, drivers, etc. usually out of the Indian sub-continent for a fee. It is as normal a business as your average employment agencies all over the world.

Hiccups do happen like anywhere else in the world, here it is as published today by the IBT.

Recruitment agency loses licence over ‘win an Ethiopian maid’ contest

Bahrain’s labour watchdog said competition was flagged for possible human trafficking. 

 By Elsa Buchanan

A recruitment agency in Bahrain that ran a competition on social media offering its followers the chance “to win an Ethiopian maid” during the month of Ramadan has had its licence suspended pending the outcome of an official probe, it has emerged.

Rights groups have repeatedly warned of the treatment of domestic workers – including large numbers of workers from Sub-Saharan Africa primarily from Ethiopia, Ghana and Kenya – in Gulf countries.

The domestic employment agency, Al Hazeem Manpower, was investigated after it published a picture on its Facebook account in which it promised users: “During the month of Ramadan, follow and mention the Instagram account and win an Ethiopian maid”, complete with “runaway” insurance (below).

In its ad, Al Hazeem Manpower outlined the one condition to designate a winner was that he, or she, had to have a work permit to employ a domestic worker.

Bahrain’s Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA) suspended the agency’s licence while it investigates the competition that has been flagged for possible human trafficking.

Ausamah Al Absi, LMRA’s chief executive, is quoted by Bahrain News agency as saying the recruitment agency treat their workers as “commodities”, and slammed the campaign as “disrespectful” and “extremely offensive”. The agency subsequently deleted the posts, but posted an edited version on Instagram (below) in which it removed the offer to “win a domestic worker” .

Responding to the claims, Al Hazeem Manpower, claimed it did nothing wrong except use the “wrong wording”, and that they “immediately made the required changes” following the complaint.

Last month, footage emerged of a woman filming her Ethiopian maid falling from a seventh-floor window without attempting to help her. Kuwaiti authorities have opened an investigation.

Any thoughts?