Agent accuses client of forging medical report

Eric Mdoka who is answering a charge of Trafficking in Persons after one of the 38 women sent back from Kuwait last August sued him told the Blantyre Magistrate’s Court on Thursday her former client Cathy Maloya run away from that country for fear of being discovered that she forged her medical report.

Chief Resident Magistrate Thom Ligowe asked Mdoka to start cross examining state witnesses himself after the court waited for over one and a half hours for defense lawyer Maxwell Tembo who did not give the court any information regarding his absence in the court for the second time.

Tembo first failed to show up in the court at the beginning of trial on September 22.

While admitting that he facilitated Maloya’s travel to Kuwait during the cross examination, Mdoka said after authorities in Kuwait got suspicious of her client’s medical report, they ordered her to be tested again “and this is when she decided to run to the Malawi embassy after being threatened that she could land in serious consequences if the new report shows different results.”

But Maloya maintained that she ran away from her master because of the cruel treatment she was getting and harsh working conditions.

She challenged the court that she was ready to do all tests to prove that the medical report she got from Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (Qech) and presented to authorities in Kuwait had genuine results.

“I ran away from my master before the medical results from Kuwait were out.,, all the papers I presented there were genuine. Let me do the tests again here and see if machines from Qech failed to detect what Mdoka is talking about,” she told the court.

Ligowe has since adjourned the case to December 21 for further trial.

Mdoka who is currently on court bail pleaded not guilty to the charge on August 25 this year.

Testifying in court as a first witness in September, Maloya narrated how she was rendered in hands of cruel people to work for, as a nanny, in exchange for KD730 (about K1 738603).

“I do not know how much Mdoka was paid for this but the Kuwait agent he was working with got KD730 from my master as a price for my sale,” she told the court.

She went on to tell the court that she was working continuously for 20 hours, from 6am to 2am and was only having a chapatti and a cup of coffee for the whole day.

Maloya who left for Kuwait in May this year, fled to the Malawian embassy in Kuwait after working in such a condition for two weeks.

She arrived in the country last August after government started repatriating the stranded women who went to Kuwait on pretext that they will be accorded good jobs.