Firms ordered to release 8,000 passports of kyeyo seekers
DESPERATE: Job seekers crowd at Aikan, a human resources and management consultancy firm that does recruitment for some corporate companies. PHOTO/ FILE
What you need to know:
- Addressing journalists in Kampala yesterday, the ministry’s spokesperson, Mr Simon Peter Mundeyi, the ministry carried out an investigation and discovered that a certain labour company in Kampala is keeping 2,000 passports of job seekers in their office.
The Internal Affairs ministry has ordered labour export companies to return more than 8,000 passports that they illegally confiscated from job seekers.
Addressing journalists in Kampala yesterday, the ministry’s spokesperson, Mr Simon Peter Mundeyi, the ministry carried out an investigation and discovered that a certain labour company in Kampala is keeping 2,000 passports of job seekers in their office.
“Ever since the business of exporting labour to the outside world reduced, so many girls, especially those who had applied for passports to go out to work in the Arab world, have had their passports confiscated by labour export companies,” Mr Mundeyi said.
He added: “So most of these companies have taken possession of these passports claiming they are waiting for contracts to be given to them from the Middle East countries and we have received several complaints from these girls.”
Complaints
“We would like to call upon these companies to return these passports to these Ugandans since they cannot be taken out for labour. We have our intelligence indicating that some of these companies are using these passports to ask for contracts and when contracts are given to them, and ask the girls to pay more money for the passports that they have already processed,” he said.
Efforts to get a comment from the spokesperson of labour companies were futile as his known phone numbers were off by press time.
Every year, about 80,000 young Ugandans, mainly women flock to the Middle East, such as the United Arab Emirates , Oman, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, in search of jobs due to the unemployment rate in Uganda, according to the Ministry of Gender.
