Ramanathapuram
Stating that they could not get in touch with their mother, who had gone to Kuwait to work as housemaid, two young girls made a tearful plea to the Collector here on Monday, urging him to take up the issue with the government and facilitate the return of their mother at the earliest.
A class VIII student and her sister studying class V, who came to the Collectorate here with their grandparents, said their mother P. Lingamuthu, 37, had gone to Kuwait in December, 2018 and could not be contacted for the last 15 days. They apprehended a threat to her life, the girls said.
Lingamuthu was living separately at Mangalam near Kadaladi after her husband deserted her, taking care of her two daughters by taking up farm work and ‘100 days work’ under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme when a woman in the village suggested that she could make good money if she went to Kuwait to work as housemaid.
Looking for greener pastures, she went to Kuwait only to end up as a ‘bonded labour’. When she called up her daughters and parents a fortnight ago, Lingamuthu had cried saying she was treated as a slave and denied food and medical facilities. She was locked up in a room and given one a meal a day, she told them.
As Kumaravel, an agent in Thiruvannamalai, had arranged her employment, Sivaperumal, father of Lingamuthu requested him to send his daughter back but the agent said that he already bore her travel expenses and demanded ₹ two lakh for her return.
The two girls were studying in a hostel attached to a private school in Vembar and struggled to focus on their studies, he said. As their father had left, their mother was their sole custodian, he said.
In another case, U. Tamilarasi from RS Mangalam presented a petition to the Collector to help her to trace her missing husband. Jaisankar in Maravamangalam had taken her husband Udayakumar for work at Pune, a few months ago, and he could not be contacted for the last one month, she said.
She was struggling with her two daughters, she said and urged the Collector to help her to get back her husband. She also presented a similar petition to Superintendent of Police Omprakash Meena.