Sabina Chege in push to have recruiting agencies re-vetted

Nominated MP Sabina Chege has pledged to draft a bill to compel the government to vet recruitment agencies afresh.

The bill, the MP said, will protect Kenyans who are duped by the agencies and left stranded in foreign countries.

Some of the agencies, she said, take money from Kenyans and promise them jobs only, to abandon them in other countries.

“They promise them jobs and when they get there, some have their passports confiscated,” she said.

The bill will require the agencies to reapply for licences.

A family in Weithaga, Murang’a county, is waiting for the government to help repatriate their 37-year-old daughter, Margaret Nduta.

Nduta was convicted of drug trafficking in Vietnam and the MP has been championing efforts to save her life.

“Like in Nduta’s case, some people promised her a house help job, only for her to be jailed for drug trafficking. We want to know why they travelled from Nairobi to Ethiopia by bus and the circumstances under which her bag was exchanged in Ethiopia,” Chege said.

She vowed to push for the bill’s passage, saying it will save the lives of Kenyan youth seeking greener pastures abroad.

“I will liaise with the Ministry of Labour and the President himself to make sure the agencies are vetted afresh,” she said.

The new law will ensure recruits are trained before leaving the country to equip them with the skills necessary to cope with foreign environments.

Some of the recruits have never left the country and are vulnerable to manipulation by unscrupulous businesspeople.

“They need to be trained before they are dispatched that they should not handle other people’s luggage under any circumstance, be it shoes, purses or bags.”

Recruits should also learn how to reach out to the local embassies for help, in case they land into problems, citing the many cases of abuse reported by Kenyans living in foreign countries, some of whom end up dead.

A report published by the New York Times on March 16, claimed that 274 Kenyan workers, mostly women, have died in Saudi Arabia in five years.

The report said last year, 55 Kenyan workers died in the foreign country, twice as many as the previous year. Further, it claimed that postmortem reports labelled their deaths as “natural”, despite describing their bodies as “evidenced with trauma”, including burns and electric shocks.

An untold number of Ugandans have died, too, but the Ugandan government does not release data.

Most of the recruiting agencies in the two countries are owned by senior government officials, or people well connected in the government, the article claimed.

Early this month, 64 Kenyans were rescued from cyber scams compounds on the border of Thailand and Myanmar, after being lured with promises of lucrative jobs only to find themselves in exploitative conditions.

According to the UN Office on Crimes and Drugs, the scam compounds flourished during the Covid-19 pandemic, with victims narrating ordeals of being forced to achieve daily targets of up to $50,000.

The Kenyans were among 7,000 victims who were left stranded at the border after being freed by armed groups from the slave camps.

Last week, Labour PS Shadrack Mwadime said the government has signed agreements with various countries to safeguard Kenyans working abroad.