Job Seekers and the Endless Brutality they Face in Middle-East

The unemployment crisis has hit the country’s young generation so hard, especially graduates who have been forced to look for any kind of job including house chores and cleaning jobs in the Middle Eastern countries.

The Department of Immigration all over the country has registered long queues of youths seeking to apply for passport and travel documents in the past few weeks.

A spot check by Soko Directory confirmed that many of these applicants are youths of ages 18-35 from different counties including Nairobi, Kisumu, Machakos, Mombasa, Kericho, who are desperately looking for casual or informal job opportunities to enable them to roll the dice of life.

Kisumu Regional Immigration Officer Tom Anyim said most of the applicants are young girls who in the past have been duped by various agencies.

Anyim reported that these unscrupulous agencies all over the country have been recruiting young girls promising bounty salaries which later turns sour.

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They are later forced to do awkward jobs like gardeners, housemaids, and worst sex slaves ending up with no or less pay.

“We have heard stories of these ladies undergoing harsh conditions including horrendous deaths and torture. Despite this, Kenyan women are still flocking to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar,” he disclosed.

The department has experienced a rise in applicants during this period of the Covid 19 pandemic. The victims are facing tough economic times due to job losses, which makes it very difficult to convince them to abandon their job search mission in the Gulf countries.

Passport issuance is an entitlement to every Kenyan and so anybody seeking for application cannot be denied access.

There have been several stories in the daily news coverage in the Kenyan media of how Kenyan women are being mistreated in the middle east. Numerous cases of violence, torture, sexual harassment, and now even murder. A recent case is Caroline Aluoch who died in Saudia Arabia.

For many Kenyan girls who have traveled to the Middle East in search of a better and happy life, the result has been the exact opposite. Most of them come back to Kenya disappointed or as corpses.

Earlier, the National Assembly Committee of Foreign Affairs dispatched a team to Saudi Arabia to study the administration and management of foreign employment for the millions of migrant workers

One teenager from Machakos County who was queuing in Nairobi for the necessary travel document confined that her family was undergoing tough times and she’s their only hope.

When a friend shared with her about the recent recruitments, being the breadwinner, she grabbed the opportunity having in mind it would change the situation at home.

“I traveled from Machakos accompanied by six other ladies since the appointments in Nairobi normally get fully booked early,” she narrated.

She added that the agencies assured them of their safety, quoting that there are millions of Kenyans who have been there previously and secured good jobs.

Wycliffe Odera (a parent who had accompanied his son in search of a passport), in Kisumu county, pleaded with the government to create more job opportunities for the youths to close the huge gap of unemployment.

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“It pains me as a parent to see my son and many other youths who pursued smart careers but have walked the streets for many years without any luck. What would you do as a parent other than allowing them to travel to the diaspora when a favorable circumstance arises?” he questioned.

The government is now appealing to the youth to be very careful with the many agencies since a good number of them are not genuine.

During her tenure as the Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Amina Mohammed recommended a total ban on domestic worker’s export.