A woman that is heavily pregnant has cried out for help after she was trafficked to Lebanon and left to suffer.
The woman, Rasheedat Taiwo Saka is eight months pregnant and she told Sahara Reporters yesterday that she has had no access to health care and food despite the COVID-19 pandemic. She said she was currently locked up with other victims of trafficking in her traffickers’ office.
While recalling how she got into that mess, she said she left Nigeria after she was financially down due to her husband’s death in November 2018.
She said she was approached by three agents in Nigeria who presented her with the opportunity of working in Lebanon.
She said: “Before I left for Lebanon, they bought our passport and ticket and said two months of our salary will be theirs’ when we got there.
“I didn’t know I was pregnant when I left Nigeria. When I got to Lebanon, the agency and my employer took me to the hospital, they found out I was pregnant but still forced me to work.
“Despite my condition, I was forced to work for six months from house to house until the house where I worked last. I had started showing very well, the woman returned me to the agency.
“I have not been paid. I reached out to the agent, Mr John, and narrated my ordeal to him saying I wanted to come home because the agency in Lebanon claimed I owed them. He dismissed me, saying my trouble was too much and asked me to contact my family to settle the Lebanese traffickers even when he knew I have no family. He has also been disturbing me, asking me to pay him, claiming I still owed him after collecting my salary from the agency in Lebanon.”
Rasheedat lamented that she is currently locked up in the trafficking agency’s office in Lebanon.
She said: “I, alongside other women, some from Nigeria and others from Ghana, are currently locked up in an office building. The bed we are sleeping on is children’s size and I am eight months pregnant. Throughout yesterday I could not sleep because I am in severe pain.
“I am hungry too. In fact, so hungry that I had to beg one of the staff in the building to buy food for me yesterday to eat, he bought bread and gave me. Then we were given five pieces of potatoes to eat; we are more than six in number.”
