Indian Workers Duped On Iraq Duty

Soumitra Gomes says that when he applied for a job as a cook in Kuwait, he never expected to earn double what he was promised. But he also says he didn't expect to end up in Iraq.

Gomes' story - that job recruiters didn't tell him he was going into a war zone - is echoed by many families of this village of 5,000 people, 60 miles north of Calcutta. "I thought I would be placed in some company in Kuwait," Gomes told The Associated Press. "But instead I found myself in a U.S. army camp in Iraq, amidst bomb explosions and gunfire."

A recruiting executive insists, however, that the men are fully informed and are paid handsomely for the dangers they face. And the men in Begopara acknowledge that they were paid $400 a month on average - double the wages on offer in other Gulf states and four times what cooks earn in India.

The issue has grown more acute with the kidnapping of three Indian truckers by insurgents. The Indian government has ordered an investigation into agencies that allegedly hired workers for jobs in peaceful Gulf states but sent them into neighboring Iraq.

Of the thousands of applicants who approach the Bava International recruiting agency in Bombay, some actually volunteer for jobs in Iraq, said a company official who declined to be identified by name. He said Bava, which arranged work for some of the Begopara men, merely handed its recruits over to other job agencies in Kuwait and Jordan and took no responsibility for their ending up in Iraq.

In Kuwait, Mohammad Shabbir Khan, an executive of the Tamimi Co. agency that matches recruits to jobs, denied as "total lies" the suggestion that workers were misled.

South Asians make up a large chunk of the Gulf work force, and getting a job there is no simple matter. Many use up their family's savings or sell off farmland to pay recruiting agents anywhere between 20,000 and 80,000 rupees ($435-$1,740) for airfare and three-year work contracts. They then have to earn the money back, and even if that means going to Iraq, many feel they have little choice.

Almost every family in this Christian village of rice and sugar cane fields has a relative working in Iraq as a cook or kitchen hand. Most had been working as chefs in Bombay when they saw newspaper ads offering jobs in Gulf states with no mention of Iraq.

"It's a racket," said Gomes, sitting on a creaky cot inside his frugal home. "Iraq needs workers and these agents supply them illegally, using Iraq's neighboring countries as conduits."

Khan, Tamimi's director of operations in Kuwait and Iraq, said a company executive interviews all applicants in their home countries. "He tells them, you will be in Iraq, maybe in an un-air-conditioned tent in a base,"' Khan said.

He said every worker has to sign a paper stating he understands the working conditions. "All our employees are paid overtime when they work over eight hours (a day). We have pay slips," Khan said.

They get a hardship allowance of 25 percent of their monthly salary, plus a danger allowance of at least $170 a month, he said.

He said the allegations were most probably made by workers who have been fired.

Villager Sandip Mondal said he went to Iraq in February 2003 and his salary was paid on time but his contract didn't mention any allowances or overtime. He said he too was promised a job in Kuwait, then asked to go to Iraq. "I had left home to find work and couldn't go back home without earning money. So I went to Baghdad," he said.

On the other hand, Amit Sarkar said his Bombay recruiters did tell him he would be sent to Iraq. He was one of 70 kitchen staff feeding 22,000 soldiers at a U.S. military camp in Baghdad. "We had no problem whatsoever," the 22-year-old villager said. "We were paid our salaries on time and there was no problem when we wanted to return."

But he said he left on July 25, after seven months, at the urging of his father, Nitai, who was worried about attacks by militants. "I told him to forget about the money, just come home," Nitai Sarkar said.

Gomes, who returned in June after nine months for reasons he wouldn't explain, said that after spending 13 days in Kuwait, he was told he would be taken to Bilat, Iraq. "I had no option but to go to Iraq because I paid 32,000 rupees ($695) for a job," he said.

He said he traveled for three days across the desert in a bus that dropped off workers at different camps, and ended up among 150 kitchen workers serving 30,000 U.S. troops in Bilat.

Another man in Begopara, Jacob Mondal, said he applied at Bava International in Bombay for a job in Kuwait, but stayed there for only two days in February before he and 18 other Indians were bused to the Iraq border escorted by a U.S. military convoy. There, Iraqi guards stamped a "security clearance" into their passports.

Mondal (who is not related to Sandip Mondal) said he worked as a cook for more than 10 hours a day, whipping up beefsteaks and pudding for U.S. Army officers based in Baghdad's Al-Sadeer Hotel. He said he started in February and returned home in May because he was worried about being stranded when his three-month Kuwait visa expired.

"I heard gunshots and bombs constantly," recalled Mondal, 29, who has a wife and 1-year-old child. "I didn't want to take a chance so I never left the hotel."

Mondal said he had no complaints about his $400 monthly wage. "I can't ever dream of earning that money in India," he said. But he said the danger and lack of mobility have convinced him he doesn't want to return.

By Nupur Banerjee