- The CS said that the government is working to streamline labour migration to Saudi Arabia.
- Bore said the government has been able to do away with rogue recruitment agencies.
Image: HANDOUT
The government will set up a desk at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to register domestic workers leaving the country.
Labour and Social Protection Cabinet Secretary Florence Bore said the desk will monitor the numbers of migrant workers leaving the country and where they are going to work.
She spoke on Thursday during a meeting convened to deliberate on labour migration between Kenya and Saudi Arabia.
The CS said that the government is working to streamline labour migration to Saudi Arabia, which is Kenya’s largest destination for domestic workers.
Bore said the government has been able to do away with rogue recruitment agencies of domestic workers destined for Saudi Arabia.
“We have been able to reduce the number of recruitment agencies from 900 to between 500- 600, and we want to reduce them further to about 100. We want to have the right people recruiting Kenyans in order to protect migrant workers,” she said.
The recruitment of domestic workers to Saudi Arabia started way back in 1998 and to date the agencies have increased from five to 600.
Bore said currently there are over 200,000 Kenyans working in Saudi Arabia, 70 per cent of them are under-skilled while the remaining 30 per cent are semi-skilled and professionals.
“We have gotten an opportunity to take 2,500 nursing job opportunities in Saudi Arabia and we are in the process of finalising the paperwork to have diploma and degree graduates travel to Saudi Arabia by mid-January,” Bore said.
The CS said they want to collaborate with the Saudi government to help streamline migrant workers.
"We want to ensure that we are able to identify the right workers, know where they go, what they are going to do and we also get to know the terms of their contract,” she added.
She said this will be done by the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection in partnership with the Ministry of Human Resources in Saudi Arabia.
A team of officials from Saudi Arabia is in the country for a two-day visit to various institutions such as the National Youth Service, medical and Tvet centres to see how they can have more graduates recruited for jobs in Saudi.
The CS said the meeting with labour migration officials from Kenya and Saudi Arabia and private recruitment agencies will be seeking to increase the number of Kenyans travelling in search of jobs in Saudi Arabia.
Khalid Al-dukhi, chief executive officer Musaned, said they are working to streamline and iron out any hurdles o slowing down the recruitment of domestic workers to Saudi Arabia.
“We are working to improve the plight of foreign workers, and I am certain with a few changes to the model, we can increase the numbers by 50 per cent in the years to come,” he said.