The government is planning to export more skilled labourers and not just domestic workers.
Labour and Skills development PS Geoffrey Kaituko said the country would benefit more if we continue investing in skilled workers.
"Most of our workers are domestic employees who go to the Gulf countries, now we want to expand the access to more countries," Kaituko said.
The PS spoke on the sidelines with the press when he appeared before the Labour Committee on Tuesday.
He said the government is committed to opening up more opportunities in other continents.
"This year we want to invest more in our labour migration, our remittances have been almost Sh500bn but now we want to increase to Sh1 trillion," Kaituko said.
On the safety of labour migrants, the PS said the lack of enough personnel in the gulf countries has been a challenge.
For instance, in Saudi Arabia Kaituko said there was only one attache who are in charge of administrative issues for the whole country.
"Cabinet approved seven additional, two more for Saudi because it is a big country and we have many workers there," he said.
He said there are more than 170,000 Kenyans working in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.
"If we are really to gain in labour migration we need to invest in labour attaches so that this works," he said.
In January, Labor CS Florence Bore visited Saudi Arabia on a fact-finding mission on issues facing Kenyan workers in the Arab realm.
Her visit came barely two months after a similar visit by foreign affairs CS Alfred Mutua to the Gulf state.
“The CS is on a fact-finding mission on issues concerning labour migration, focusing on the welfare of migrant workers and creation of more job opportunities in the Middle East,” read a statement from the ministry.
Bore was accompanied by PS Kaituko.
The Central Bank of Kenya Diaspora Remittances Survey, published in December 2021, indicates that most Kenyans leave the country in search of job opportunities and higher education abroad.
The amount of money Kenyans in the diaspora send back home – also known as remittances – has been steadily rising in the last 10 to 15 years.
As a result, remittance inflows to Kenya currently represent one of the country’s main sources of foreign exchange, rivalling export earnings from key economic sectors such as tourism, tea, and horticulture.
The US, which is Kenya’s top remittances source, recorded an annual inflation rate of 6.4 per cent in January, down from 6.5 per cent in December which had eased from a four-decade high of 9.1 per cent earlier in June.
In January Kenyans living and working abroad sent home $349.4 million (Sh44.2 billion), a 3.2 per cent increase compared to $338.7 million (Sh42.8 billion) sent in the same month in 2022.
This was also an improvement from the remittances of Sh44. 1billion in December last year, and Sh42. 6 billion in November.
