KAMPALA —Civil Society organizations under the Women Economic Empowerment Coalition have asked the government to review the National Employment Act 2006 to include key legal provisions on externalization of labour.
The coalition which includes Actionaid International Uganda, Institute for Transformation, UN Women, Allied Worker’s Association Limited among other also wants government to enhance the capacity of the Externalization of Labour Unit at the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development as well as all Missions and Embassies abroad to enforce MOUs aimed at protection of labor rights, dignity, privacy, fair treatment and gainful work for women and girls working abroad.
The recommendations are contained in a national position paper on Women Labour Rights in Uganda where they raised issues regarding protection of labour rights for women working abroad.
“The Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development has limited resources to sustainably follow-up the conditions in which Ugandan work abroad.
They also accused the government of failing to recruit foreign agents to verify labour requests and foreign agencies’ capacity and good will to hire Ugandans abroad at acceptable minimum working conditions and rates.
“This lacuna has been exploited by foreign agencies as widely documented in the press throughout 2019 and 2020 of women and girls who have been physical often threatened, beaten, raped and even killed, emotionally with some cases of women and girls committing suicide and financially abused and their passports confiscated,” they said.
The Ministry of Gender migrant labour report indicates that at least an average of 24,086 Ugandans leave Uganda annually in search of employment, especially to the Middle East.
Ugandans searching for employment with the country taking a total of 126,873, which represents at least 75.2 percent of total migrant workers in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia is followed by the United Arab Emirates, which in the last six years has taken in 19,671 workers followed by Qatar with an intake of 8,089.
The number of migrant workers seeking employment in the Middle East has been growing in the last 10 years, peaking to above 21,612 in 2018, before dropping sharply in 2020 to 9,026 due to Covid-19 disruptions.
Ugandans have been lured by the promise of well-paid work, to support family back home and fund an education.
But widespread claims of exploitation and abuse have mounted in the recent past.
Ms. Flavia Rwabuhoro Kabahenda, the Chairperson Parliamentary Committee of Gender Labor and Social Development said Parliament would pay close attention to issues raised by CSOs
Kabahenda also the Kyegegwa District Woman Member of Parliament said Uganda needs to institutionalize domestic work like other countries.
“We can do this by having a training of six months in domestic work,” she said, adding that: “That is how we will have a competitive edge over other countries. Through the training, they will be oriented and introduced to the various appliances.”
“If domestic work is what we have to take as Ugandans that the government has subjected us to, let us sanitize it and make it so professional, that we shall be the choice,” Kabahenda said.
“So we need to create that competitive advantage. And I see an opportunity there,” she said adding that migrant workers need to undergo serious training of at least six months.
“The two weeks that they are training here is actually just an orientation. So let us do work on ourselves and give ourselves a competitive advantage. So that even if it is domestic work, which most of the people look down upon, for us, we put it up there so that even the corporate person here will pick a domestic worker that she’s sure about that she knows how to really manage a modern home or a corporate home.”
Ms. Ritah Nanyonga, the Women Economic Empowerment Technical Officer at ActionAid Uganda said the focus should also be put on supporting regulatory work over licensing, supervision, routine inspection and audit of all labour recruiting agencies aimed at migrating Ugandan women and girls who seek work abroad.
“More needs to be done on awareness creation and sensitization about the process, benefits and associated requirements to work. In most cases it is only when women and girls get challenges in this process that they are provided information-when they have already endured a lot of rights abuses and harm,” Ms. Nanyonga said.
However, government says it’s tackling the problem by encouraging domestic workers to travel to Jordan and Saudi Arabia through government-approved, licensed recruitment agencies, so citizens can be monitored and educated on their rights.
