Iraq: Military Contractor Confines Foreign Workers In Warehouses

McClatchy Newspapers:

BAGHDAD -- About 1,000 Asian men who were hired by a Kuwaiti subcontractor to the U.S. military have been confined for as long as three months in windowless warehouses near the Baghdad airport without money or a place to work.

Najlaa International Catering Services, a subcontractor to KBR, an engineering, construction and services company, hired the men, who're from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. On Tuesday, they staged a march outside their compound to protest their living conditions.

"It's really dirty," a Sri Lankan man told McClatchy, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he still wants to work for Najlaa. "For all of us, there are about 12 toilets and about 10 bathrooms. The food -- it's three half-liter (one pint) bottles of water a day. Bread, cheese and jam for breakfast. Lunch is a small piece of meat, potato and rice. Dinner is rice and dal, but it's not dal," he said, referring to the Indian lentil dish.

Read the whole story: McClatchy Newspapers

Comments

[CheneysACoward]

Here is the story...The United States goes to Iraq to liberate. Those we liberate, turn around and do worse to others.....and we stand by? Had it not been for CNN reporting on this these poor bastards would still be held in the same conditions today.
Dick Cheney many say you'll burn in hell...I say hell has been and still is your," undisclosed location"

[kareemachan]

And notice how KBR and Halliburton crop up in the article?

[FogBelter]

Let me guess ... these workers were brought into Kuwait, divested of their passports, and smuggled into Iraq to work in order to bypass the Iraqi Law limiting foreign workers. These workers were somehow apprehended by Iraqi Authorities as undocumented workers and since they don't have their papers the Military Contractor has no way of knowing how to repatriate them ... more or less the story I'd say.

[tbone99]

So this is what we're spending millions a day on?
American democratization - what a sham.

[CharlesJ]

More coruption at its best. I would be willing to bet that these people were promised jobs, they paid their fees, their money taken, and now find themselves housed in the worst of conditions with now work. Our government needs to police these contractors who were hired by the DOD, and recoup the theft not only against these people but that theft that has been against the American tax payer.
It is amazing that our military was self sustainable in all other wars, they had their own construction units (light and heavy construction), they had their own mess halls, gas jockies, mechanics, they could do it all, now we pay contractors 10 times more to do what we in the military did for ourselves. Our who DOD structure is full of coruption, kickbacks, pay offs ect and it needs to stop.