• The groups say it was sad that exploiters take advantage of poverty levels in the rural areas to woo them by promising them jobs in the Middle East only to end up with in problems.
• Trace Kenya director Paul Adhoch says traffickers normally send their agents to the most remote areas to recruit young and jobless youth.
Image: ALPHONCE GARI
Lobby groups want the government to use all means possible to curb, if not eradicate, human trafficking and girls’ exploitation in the country.
Led by Trace Kenya, a human rights organisation, the groups say it was sad that exploiters take advantage of poverty levels in the rural areas to woo them by promising them jobs in the Middle East only to end up in problems.
Addressing youth groups at Shariani on Monday, Trace Kenya director Paul Adhoch said traffickers normally send their agents to the most remote areas to recruit young and jobless youth.
Adhoch said the agents promise the desperate youths heaven with the hope that once they travel to the Middle East, they will get good salaries and transform their lives.
Unfortunately, he said, when the youth get there, they end up working for long hours and earn peanuts.
"For the over 18 years I have been with the organisation, I have heard many cries from victims struggling to bring hundreds of their relatives and friends suffering in the Middle East and burying many who died after being tortured to death by their employees," Adhoch said.
The director said others are taken to urban areas where they are promised house help jobs but end up becoming sex workers.
He said human trafficking stories are well-known but still need to be told and possible solutions found to reduce the cases if they cannot be wiped out.
Also present was Terre des hommes director Godfrey Kibet, who urged youths present to be awareness ambassadors in their respective areas.
Kibet said the traffickers target girls who have just finished schooling and promise them attractive salaries.
"Due to their poverty levels, they normally accept the offered amounts only to end up suffering after reaching the destination," he said.
Mwangaza CBO director Franklin Mwarome, who was the host, said they have buried youths in his area who were torture victims in Saudi Arabia.
They were promised livelihoods but returned in coffins.
He said the government should take responsibility for “quack” agents that do not care about the well being of their clients in foreign countries while they pocket millions of money.
Edited by EKibii