The Departmental Committee on Labour and Social welfare, chaired by Mwea MP Hon Kabinga Wachira, today held a consultative forum with the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Interior and Coordination; the Department of Immigration, National Employment Authority, and the National Industrial Training Authority to address the issues that arose out of the findings of the committee’s visit to Saudi Arabia in October-November.
Some of the issues that were highlighted and discussed at length include:
i) Lack of safe houses for Kenyans in distress, with the ministry of Foreign Affairs reporting 79 deaths of domestic workers in the middle east in the last two years.
ii) Unscrupulous recruitment agencies that do not follow the stipulated law and procedures when recruiting workers. The government is in this case, proposing the review of Regulations on Vetting Private Employment Agencies (PEAs), Supervision of the PEAs, and review of existing Bilateral Labour Agreements.
iii) Rogue agents who hold domestic workers in camp and hotels, subject the recruits to inhuman treatment and living conditions, sharing of recruits’ salaries, and making unjustifiable and illegal deductions from their salaries.
iv) Poor, inadequate or inappropriate responses to the concerns raised by recruits. This, according to the Ministry of Labour; is because of inadequate personnel, as there is only one Labour Attache’ per station.
v) Shortage of staff at the embassy, which hinder effective supervision and service delivery to Kenyan in distress. The ministries have urged the committee to consider increasing their budgetary allocation in the next budget cycle to enable them expand the human resource base and infrastructure.
vi) Failure to meet contractual and legal obligations like failing to place recruits in work, change of employers, failure to meet repatriation costs for those wanting to return home or remains of deceased. The Ministries have suggested that her should be a stop in recruitment of ‘cleaners’ in Saudi Arabia in order to address the challenges raised.
vii) In-adequate pre-departure training and orientation of domestic workers, or lack of it. The ministries have initiated processes to address this, like review of criterion and modalities for opening more Training Centers.
viii) Lack of dispute resolution mechanisms, blamed on little capacity to handle the increased numbers of reported cases.
The Committee also met with the Kenya Association of Private Employment Agencies (KEPEA), Association of Skilled Migrant Agencies of Kenya (ASMAK), and the Transformative Trainers Welfare Association of Kenya, to deliberate on the role of private employment Agencies and Trainers in the labour export of domestic workers to the middle east.
The Agencies, are seeking to work with the government in ensuring an improvement in the management and regulation of the sector.
On Monday, the Committee is scheduled to have a meeting for Public Participation in Nairobi, main parliament buildings, where it will collect views from various interested members of the public before retreating to write its report on the same.+20
