President Uhuru Kenyatta asked to check Middle East job scam

A Nakuru-based lobby group wants President Kenyatta to order investigations into the shipping of Kenyans to the Middle East in search of employment.

Social Watch has written to President Kenyatta, asking him to direct the Inspector-General of Police to carry out investigations into the atrocities Kenyans are suffering in Middle East countries.

But Saudi Arabia Ambassador Ghorm Malhan on Tuesday denied claims of mass mistreatment of domestic workers. He told reporters that cases of mistreatment are “few and isolated.”

“We have about 80,000 Kenyans in Saudi Arabia. And we have nine million expatriates from all over the world working in Saudi Arabia and there is no problem,” he told journalists during celebrations to mark the Saudi National Day.

“You have to look at another angle away from the one or two isolated cases which are not by policy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” he said.

GOVERNMENT POLICY

Speaking at the same function, National Assembly Majority Leader Aden Duale said the government was drafting a policy to be in place by November this year to regulate employment of Kenyans abroad.

The new law will reduce cases of Kenyans getting mistreated in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.

“The problem we are facing until now is that there are so many briefcase employment agencies in the country,” he said.

“Up to now, the government doesn’t know who they are working for; even the Saudi government doesn’t know. Even today, parents affected by this don’t even know who to sue or who to complain to.”

The lobby group’s Executive Coordinator James Mugo says in the letter dated September 21 that officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Saudi embassy, the Immigration Department and the Ministry of  Labour be investigated.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT

“Kenyan women have been facing horrendous sexual harassment while their male counterparts are forcibly recruited into extremist groups in Middle East countries,” Mr Mugo claims.

He said the job applicants are made to believe the deal is clean, only for them to get shocked on arrival.

“Kenyans in those countries end up being  held at ransom, tortured and left stranded at detention camps.”

Mr Mugo asked the government to speed up a rescue plan for more than 30 Kenyans said to  be stranded in a detention camp in Saudi Arabia.

They are said to have left the country last month hoping to secure jobs in Dubai, only to realise they were headed to Saudi Arabia when they were already in the aeroplane.

Additional reporting by Aggrey Mutambo