Two stories have caught my eye in the recent past, both published in this newspaper. The first was on flower farm workers complaining about their employers changing their terms of employment to contractual and casual. The workers said their employers did this to avoid reviewing their salaries.
The second was about truck drivers. It would seem that more than 7,000 long-distance truck drivers have lost their jobs since 2019. This is a big number. The drivers’ union said companies prefer to hire foreigners on “meagre” pay.
Then came Saturday’s news about the horrific death of Beatrice Waruguru in Saudi Arabia.
Labour has been a thorny issue for as long as mankind has existed. Make that fair labour practice. Slavery remains the worst form of unfair labour practices man has come up with. It’s still being practised in this day and age, in various forms.
The 2010 Constitution guarantees every person a right to fair labour practices and every worker a right to fair remuneration, reasonable working conditions, and to form, join or participate in the activities and programmes of a trade union.
Let’s face it, however, some people work for organisations that bar them from joining trade unions. Let’s not get started on salaries. Some people work for years without getting a raise. It’s not that they are sloppy workers, companies fire you for that.
The three cases (flower farm workers, truckers and Waruguru) point to a huge problem that the government seems unable or unwilling to address. How, for instance, can a government with a ministry of labour allow a company to have a workforce made up of 90% foreign workers?
The death of Waruguru was particularly horrific as revealed by a post-mortem but she is not the first Kenyan woman to have been killed by her employer in Saudi Arabia. Why do these deaths persist?
Then again, what are Kenyans like Waruguru to do when the government allows flower farms to exploit workers by suddenly changing their terms of employment? Surely this is illegal, but neither the Labour ministry nor Cotu, that oh so impotent of umbrella unions, have said a word about this. And may I just point out that the flower farms are busy polluting our lakes as they exploit our fellow Kenyans.
So many Kenyans are left with little choice, they either agree to be exploited if lucky to get a job, or seek ‘greener’ pastures abroad, where the government does little to take care of them.
So basically we have a government that cannot take care of its people at home and abroad. It would therefore seem the huge problem I mentioned earlier is government.
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