UAE #PostWisely ad depicting 'Snapchat maid' backfires

Telecoms giant Du tweeted a video resembling the abuse of an Ethiopian maid in Kuwait who was filmed on Snapchat while hanging from a window before falling seven storeys.

Narrated

2 min read

The New Arab

13 Mar, 2018

The video resembled the abuse of a maid in Kuwait who was filmed falling [Twitter]

Social media users slammed a UAE-based telecommunications company this week for what was described as an insensitive video posted online depicting the fall of a maid in Kuwait last year.

Du, one of the two telecom operators in the UAE, posted a video on Twitter resembling an incident involving an Ethiopian maid in Kuwait who was filmed on Snapchat while hanging from a window before falling seven storeys.

"She needed only one person to help her. Not the whole world looking at her," the caption says, before adding the company's campaign hashtag #PostWisely.

Twitter Post

But despite the obvious attempt at goodwill, the campaign seems to have backfired with social media users suggesting the video itself was inappropriate.

Twitter Post

While most users criticised the video, others praised it for shedding light on the excessive use of technology in such situations.

Twitter Post

Adesech Sadik, the maid who made international headlines in March after her employer posted a Snapchat video of her begging for help while clinging to a window, returned home in August after miraculously surviving the fall.

Sadik was welcomed at the airport by her family and taken home, having completed medical treatment in Kuwait.

The employer was later arrested for having failed to help the worker, also claiming the maid had attempted suicide.

"I wasn't trying to commit suicide, I was trying to escape from the woman who tried to kill me," Sadik later told Ethiopian reporters.

The maid later added that God had "protected her from a worse fate", had her employer pulled her back inside the apartment.