Friday, February 27, 2015

United Nations Diplomats Living On Roosevelt Island Treated Maid As Indentured Servant Says Lawsuit Reports NY Daily News

  Image Of United Nations From Roosevelt Island FDR Four Freedoms Park

According to this NY Daily News article yesterday:
An illiterate maid from Burkina Faso was treated like an indentured servant by two United Nations diplomats from that West African nation living in New York, a new lawsuit charges.

Fatoumata Ouedraogo, 24, says she worked for the couple, Leopold Bonkoungou and Lucile Bonkoungou Ouedraogo, as a domestic servant from roughly 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week between 2008 to 2012.

The Bonkoungous promised the orphaned woman all the opportunity she’d never had in her native country: an education, steady income and the chance to score a green card for the U.S. while caring for their kids at their Roosevelt Island apartment, Ouedraogo claims in the suit filed Monday in Manhattan Federal Court....
and:
...The job ended in 2012 when the couple’s term at the UN ended.

A woman who answered the phone at the Burkina Faso UN Mission confirmed the pair no longer worked there and were out of the country
Click here for the full NY Daily News article.

1 comments :

CheshireKitty said...

This may sound strange, but given the burgeoning population of the Island, could RIOC please look into building redundancy into the elevator access system at the Manhattan side tram station by providing two passenger elevators, in addition to the lift? There are plenty of suitable spots where an additional elevator to the station deck level could be added. Maybe the new elevator could be bigger - to more easily accommodate motorized wheelchairs, as well as double-strollers, bicyclists, and so forth. It may be easier to add a new elevator from scratch rather than rehab the old elevator (if that is the problem). Maybe the elevator could be directly opposite the existing elevator (of course, the station floor plan could be studied to determine the most suitable spot for an extra elevator). This way, given the tendency of any elevator to occasionally break down, we will always have elevator access since it's highly unlikely that both elevators will break down simultaneously.