MIDDLE EAST JOBS: Welcome Relief As Mistreatment of Ugandans Decreases

No dead bodies registered back from Middle East countries for the last 2 years. Uganda’s export workers in Oman, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

5 years back, Uganda recorded a couple of abusive cases that even led to the death of many Ugandan workers while in the Middle East. This escalated and brought Uganda and Kenya to come together since tiers were felt in both countries.

This prompted all concerned stakeholders in Uganda and Kenya to find conclusive solutions to the growing human rights abuses in the Middle East. The Uganda legislators too formed a committee that took the initiative to travel for the lengthy talks among concerned authorities in the Middle East.

From the good leadership of Miss Enid Nambuya the executive directors of Uganda Association of External Recruitment Agencies (UAERA) for their continued effort and demands from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), argue for human rights step up thorough and scrutiny of the export labour Agencies at home.

A lot of efforts were taken behind, by both the Ugandan, and Kenyan governments and the Middle East governments towards making the labour industry a better one after years of negotiations amongst stakeholders from the countries mentioned.

When Legislators Become Cupid

Lately on, 22nd November 2023, a team of legislators from Kenya led by Mr Mohammed Faki, a Mombasa representative led a convoy of Kenyan parliamentarians to meet with the Ugandan legislators to have a joint discussion and efforts of their respective country labour business since they faced the same issues. Since Uganda and Kenya are in the same region (the East African community), Faki begged to have a joint voice so they can have thoroughly stronger bargaining power in demand for labourers’ rights.

In the meeting, it was said that not only Uganda and Kenya have exported labour to the Middle East but in the same line Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan were mentioned for their growing labour exports to the Persian countries.

Faki, in his words, mentioned that since Uganda has a labour attached in Jeddah and so does Kenya’s labour attached in Riyadh, the two can help one another to have collaborative cooperation for either country’s labour workers in case they have problems in the same country while there.

Bridging Cultures, Breaking Barriers

On several occasions, I have done the investigation from our labourers attached coordinator in Saudi Arabia, it’s true that their rights have stepped up not like 4 years back, and all this is from the continued bilateral relations and negotiations amongst countries particularly Uganda taking the forefront.

The labour attaches have done a lot to sensitization to the Arab Employers to the fact that they speak the same languages, and this alone has made communication easy thus helping the labour agents in the foreign countries understand not to undermine workers.

I have had a lengthy call to the labour attached to our mission offices in Saudi Arabia and from the talk we had, it’s not an easy job to do but they are dedicated to it. Again I got 2 girls who were having difficulties while there and the collaborations I had with our labour-attached personnel, I was mediating the rescue process that finally counted as victory since the girls were rescued from where they had been arrested in Saudi Arabia.