Gov't not doing enough to protect our girls in Arabia

Government is not doing enough for our girls in Arabia

Morris Komakech

The social media is awash with gory tales of many Ugandan girls suffering inhuman treatment – torture, sexual molestation, confinement in squalor, death, and denial of pay in Arab countries where they seek menial employment. The Daily Monitor story of the 30 girls who returned from Qatar confirms this troubling state of affairs. Evidently, the fatal fate of 22yrs old Nakachwa Sumayiya reported in the DM of July 30, 2017 shows that our government does little to protect the rights and lives of our citizens in these places.

Life in Arab world is culturally dramatic requiring adequate preparatory training.  Just in April, Minister Janat Mukwaya assured the nation that Uganda signed bilateral agreements with some Gulf Nations to safeguard the rights of these workers. Legislators need to follow up with stringent mechanisms to monitor, review, and enforce these agreements. These countries must account for the abuses of our citizens.

According to the Gender Ministry, Uganda has 65 fully licensed and operational employment agencies exporting surplus cheap labour. These agencies should commit to stringent obligations over the safety and evacuation of our girls.

Government is not doing enough!

Unfortunately, for Ugandans, it is the dysfunctional state syndrome where the people who own the employment agencies are also those within the nexus of political power. As such, they are above reproach and at own liberties to dispose Ugandans for profit. At the minimum, these agencies should provide save exit plan in countries that undermine women’s rights.

The plight of these girls illuminates contradictions in the fragile economy that resorts to selling human labour abroad. One wonders how Uganda will achieve the middle-income status on slave export.

The colorful economic growth indicators are the most deceptive. Having endured rigorous bureaucratic adulterations, these indicators make sense only on paper. Their real effects manifests in the vulnerability of our young populace to human trafficking and modern slavery.

Recently, Mr. Museveni praised UPE and USE as the cornerstone for youth skills development. Incidentally, UBOS tells us that 83% of youths, who form nearly 78% of our population, are either under-skilled or unskilled; as such, they are mostly unemployed, under- employed or unemployable. These correlations only make absolute sense given the quality and investments in UPE/USE.

The youth unemployment rate also tells us that the economy is not expanding and diversifying fast enough to accommodate the employment needs of our large youth population. Employment opportunities are in low pay services sector, and concentrated in few urban centres; Government distributes it jobs on sectarian basis and; lucrative opportunities are ring-fenced for regime loyalist and foreigners –Indians, now Chinese contractors, and others.

Clearly, UPE and USE potentials are under-utilized, leading to the low quality of human resource that we dispose off in Arabia. Many of these girls are not seeking high-end tech jobs. Those high pay, high-end skilled jobs belongs to Indians, Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans. Ugandans do the menial, dirty, undervalued, precarious, and shunned low-pay jobs that machines do elsewhere.

Ugandans could do better if the regime expects to harness and sell its surplus labour abroad. These girls bring in foreign currency to sustain the regime. The labour must have value, and it must attract protection from host government, employment agencies, and our government.

Parliament of Uganda should review and tighten some of human export laws to protect these girls. Continued inaction affirms that our government is the active agent committing our own citizens into slavery.

It is disheartening that foreigners, especially those Arabs come to Uganda where they are treated on red carpet. Imagine that they extend their cruelty to Ugandans even at home, where they openly discriminate, assault, murder, sodomize, and rape our people. Instead, the law protects these criminals. In Uganda, the foreign investor is above the law. That means, Ugandans are disposable both at home and abroad.

The End.