COTU secretary general Francis Atwoli has appealed to the government to ban all foreign employment agencies after receiving a disturbing video of a Kenyan domestic worker in Saudi Arabia facing mistreatment from her employer.
The footage which Atwoli shared during a LIVE TV interview on Sunday, October, 9, shows a woman apparently breastfeeding her employer’s dogs.
Atwoli disclosed that the woman is a mother of two and had gone to look for greener pastures.
“You better earn Sh10,000 and remain in Kenya than seek jobs outside,” he told Kenyans.
She left Kenya two months after giving birth.
Check out a glimpse of the shocking video below.
Last year, the government confirmed that a record 93 Kenyans have died in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries since 2019.
The figure was out of 87,784 employments facilitated in the Gulf region.
Appearing before the National Assembly’s Labour and Social Welfare Committee, Labour Permanent Secretary (PS) Peter Tum attributed most of the deaths to illness.
Other causes included cancer, childbirth, respiratory complications, tuberculosis and meningitis.
The PS also explained that some of the deaths were a result of accidents and suicide.
With very little opportunity at home, many see working in Arab countries as a ticket out of poverty in a country where about 40% of our population lives below the poverty line.
But Kenya’s Foreign Ministry led by Principal Secretary Macharia Kamau does very little to protect the helpless workers.
It is dereliction of their duty to keep sending unskilled workers to the Gulf to earn a meagre pay that one can earn doing the same job in Kenya.
At least 100,000 Kenyans work in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, most as domestic workers or doing other menial jobs.
Until when will they keep complaining about of lack of payment for their work, forced labor, physical abuse, rape, and dangerous working conditions?
