Govt moves to stop bad working terms in UAE
Ugandans wait to be cleared at Entebbe International Airport before they take a flight to the United Arab Emirates for work. PHOTO / FILE
What you need to know:
- The proposed agreement changes come at a time when more than 200 Ugandans have been repatriated from the UAE in the last three weeks under the National Unity Platform (NUP) campaign of deporting UAE stranded Ugandans back home.
The government has highlighted new changes to be considered during the renewal of the bilateral agreement between Uganda and United Arab Emirates (UAE) in December.
The Ministry of Labour said the changes would ensure that Ugandans in the Middle East enjoy favourable working conditions.
Addressing journalists yesterday at Uganda Media Centre, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, Mr Aggrey Kibenge, said government has found a number of loopholes in the current agreement which explains why many Ugandans working in the Middle East have continued to experience unfavourable working conditions.
READ: Govt repatriates 1,000 Ugandans
“We have bilateral agreements with other countries, including UAE, but we are going to put more emphasis on entrenching the human rights of our people. Uganda’s agreements with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and UAE are both ending this year and we are in process of reviewing these agreements for renewal,” Mr Kibenge said.
“In the renewed agreements, we want to ensure that there are no more cases of confiscating communication means or passports from migrant workers. We are also bringing the national insurance regulatory authority to help us in identifying the best schemes under which we can insure migrant workers, because leaving them at the mercy of the employers is not liable,” he added.
According to the current agreement, the employer is fully responsible for all the medical bills as well as processing the exit visa to the employees at the end of the signed contract.
In the revised agreement, the government is looking forward to having the labour exporting company responsible for repatriating the employees.
The proposed agreement changes come at a time when more than 200 Ugandans have been repatriated from the UAE in the last three weeks under the National Unity Platform (NUP) campaign of deporting UAE stranded Ugandans back home.
Speaking at the same conference, the State minister for Labour, Employment and Industrial Relations, Col (rtd) Charles Engola, said the Labour ministry needs a recurring annual budget of Shs9b to enable it execute the monitoring roles of the externalised Ugandans.
“According to the ministry budget and demands, we need Shs9b, this will enable us deploy labour attaches in various states, put in place a 24 hours working calling centre for assistance as well as distributing some resources to our embassies to ensure that they can quickly respond to labour issues,” Mr Engola said.
Repatriation
The Uganda ambassador to UAE, Mr Zaake Kibedi, said there is an ongoing amnesty by the UAE government to persons who are staying illegally in the UAE.
“Following the amnesty that was offered by the UAE government to Ugandans staying illegally in UAE, we have managed to repatriate over 15,000 people and majority of them had no travel documents and government through the Ministry of Internal Affairs managed to process travel documents for them free of charge,” Mr Kibedi remarked.
In efforts to repatriate stranded Ugandans in UAE, this publication learnt that the consul general of the Uganda consulate in Dubai, Ambassador Henry Mayega, together with the manager of Uganda Airlines in Dubai, Mr Moses Kisembo, agreed that all Ugandan deportees from UAE would be charged a reduced fee of Shs760,000 ($200) for a one-way air ticket to Entebbe airport.
