BARAYAN: Foreign jobs and their significance for Kenya

Labour Cabinet Secretary Alfred Mutua engages Kenyans who had arrived at KICC in Nairobi to present their papers for Job opportunities abroad on October 25 last year /HANDOUT

School uniforms serve a variety of important roles in the schooling and learning of a student. It promotes equality by minimising social and economic differences among students while also helping in the development of a sense of belonging and identity to a specific institution.

Lastly, school uniforms reduce distraction that is borne from fashion trends, allowing focus on academics. In my last years of primary school, there was a girl about my age in the neighbourhood who wore uniform that was not only three or so sizes smaller, but had totally faded from continuous washing over time such that one could no longer tell its colour or the school she went to.

She was, however, always neat and had her signature handkerchief on the collar of her white blouse to avoid it getting brown with dirt and thus avoid daily washing the already threadbare garment.

Her family was known to be of very limited means, and her school fees were met by a Mombasa-based education trust fund.

Her father, the prime earner for the household, had retired early due to poor health, leaving the task to her much older brothers who worked mostly as part-time matatu drivers.

I was surprised when two years later, she joined the same secondary school I was attending, wearing an impeccably well-tailored uniform, which always seemed to be freshly laundered. She also wore elaborately stylish shoes that almost didn’t qualify as school shoes. Her previous mousy demeanour had been shed, and she had a wealth of fashion tips for those who commuted with her in the school bus.

Most significantly, I learned that she was also no longer in need of a bursary. Her family paid her school fees and on time.

This tremendous shift in fortunes had been brought about by her eldest brother securing a job as a truck driver in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

This was the first and most visible benefit of remittances from Kenyans working in foreign countries that I was to witness. Nowadays, we all know what these benefits are.

We know that they bring many benefi ts, which include increases in household disposable income and an upgrade in living standards as in the case of my schoolmate.

The second outcome is the acquisition and growth of valuable resources that are owned within the family or household also termed as asset growth.

One of the most profi table low-risk investments one can make is in property in the form of rental units for the low-income earners, colloquially known in the coast as ‘Swahili-type House’.

These are to be found in all the low-rent estates of Mombasa including Likoni, Kisauni and Kongowea. The reason these houses are so profitable as an investment is that they have shared amenities to the individually rented rooms without any indignity due to Mombasa cultural norms.

Such houses are also relatively cheaper to build. My schoolmate’s family, which now had two sons working in Jeddah, had in the span of three years acquired four such properties, with tenants numbering not less than 40.

Their status was elevated and assured, with the matriarch now invited to weddings and functions she would have shied from due to a lack of appropriately elaborate outfits to wear had she but been invited.

They had attained financial stability and security. Four years ago, the younger of my schoolmate’s brothers came to seek my legal services. He had long left the logistics firm in Jeddah and had since established a thriving mango exportation business, for which he needed several contracts and lease agreements done.

Technology and skills transfer; and establishment of foreign business networks are a very real benefits that can be brought about by employment in a foreign country.

There is no doubt that there could be atrocious employers in foreign countries and that some Kenyans have come back highly traumatised. However, with a well-regulated and managed mechanism established by the government, there is no reason why Kenya, which has about half the population of the Philippines, should not have an equivalent remittance, which comparatively would be tenfold what it currently is.

Total annual diaspora remittances flowing to the Philippines amount to about $40 billion. Kenya’s annual budget is $28 billion.