The news from the $592-million embassy project rising up along the Tigris is not pretty. Low wage workers from South Asia are being smuggled in from Kuwait to help push up the profit margins of the contractor, First Kuwaiti Trading and Contracting.
Once there, First Kuwaiti managers are said to physically assault their workers, and provide paltry medical care. Safety precautions on the construction site are said to be non-existent.
What do we hear from the US State Department on this? Stone dead silence — along with hostility to any questions.
ALLEGATIONS:
* Witnesses say First Kuwaiti has smuggled low-paid Asian workers on planes toBaghdad after taking away their passports and issuing airplane boarding passes for Dubai. Taking passports is a violation of US trafficking laws and contracting.
* First Kuwaiti has coerced low-paid workers to take jobs in Iraq against their wishes after recruiters lured them to Kuwait for different jobs. (Interviews with Filipino workers who escaped Iraq available.)
* Although no journalist is allowed on embassy site, prostitutes are smuggled in by First Kuwaiti managers, according to former employees. Prostitutes are a “breach of security,” says one former manager for the company.
* An American medic recommended that health clinics serving thousands of embassy construction workers be shut down for unsanitary conditions and then was fired. He also requested the investigation of two workers who may have died from mistreatment. Prescription pain killers were handed out like “candy” and workers were sent back to work on project, he says.
* There have been numerous beatings of workers by First Kuwaiti managers and labor strikes, say former employees. This reflects complaints of others who witnessed mistreatment on other projects.
For the full, and developing story, check it out at CorpWatch.org.
this is just sad. this girl will never be the same after sick people do these type thgnis to them. hell why didnt they find a goat or something not a human being. hope you rot in jail