Let the Labour CS act on migrant workers’ plight
The suffering of Kenyan workers overseas, especially in the Middle East, is well-documented. Some have been tortured or even killed by their employers.
Every now and then, a video of a Kenyan in Saudi Arabia or some other Arab country crying out for help after being assaulted goes viral.
Overseas recruitment is a source of jobs for many unemployed Kenyans seeking greener pastures. But it is also harrowing when some return home in a coffin or maimed, whereas they left in good health to work, earn money and improve their lives.
Many have questioned what Kenyan diplomats in the countries where their compatriots are treated so inhumanely do. Should they not be protecting them?
It is the duty and cardinal responsibility of the government to protect Kenyans at home and abroad. The worst affected are domestic workers, some of whose accounts of torture abroad have moved many to tears.
This is why the plan announced last November to set up safe houses for Kenyan workers in the Middle East was received with jubilation.
But just when everybody was beginning to imagine that a solution to the endemic problem had been found, Labour Cabinet Secretary Florence Bore is lamenting that inadequate funding is hampering the execution of her mandate of protecting Kenyan migrant workers.
CS Bore has a duty to implement government programmes. But she has revealed that, while the posting of seven labour attaches to the Middle East—particularly Saudi Arabia, where Kenyan workers are routinely molested and some badly injured—has been approved, there is no money to implement this. Is the government this hapless and helpless?
Besides, recruitment agencies have been accused of selling Kenyans into modern slavery. What is the government doing to ensure that only genuine agencies are licensed to operate?
There are at least 200,000 Kenyans working in the Middle East, among the four million in the diaspora, who remitted Sh500 billion in foreign exchange to the country last year. The government must do all it can to protect Kenyan workers abroad.
