Say no to employment at any cost

One of the most important obligations for any government is to ensure that as many of its able-bodied youths are in gainful employment, therefore contributing to the country’s economy while bettering their own lives and those of their dependents.

Widespread joblessness is a festering sore, one that inevitably leads to widespread poverty, dependence, desperation and crime. These are all outcomes few governments, except the very clueless, desire for their people.

Three of the past regimes in Kenya always struggled to fulfill that obligation with mixed results. Getting jobs during Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s era was never difficult especially if you had a modicum of education — you could walk into an office and leave smiling – while former President Mwai Kibaki succeeded in creating jobs due to business-friendly policies.

However, President Uhuru Kenyatta’s second term was buffeted by Covid-19, a bug that devastated most economies worldwide severely shrinking jobs, while the war between Russia and Ukraine continues to have a highly negative effect on the country’s food security.

President William Ruto has made job creation one of the main planks of his administration though some of the proposals made have raised questions.

It is a fact that empowering those on the lower rungs of the ladder in society, the so-called hustlers, with measures meant to afford them capital to grow their small hustles was brilliant in conception, but it was stymied by the government’s own proclivity for giving with one hand (Hustler Fund) and taking away with the other through high taxes.

The other measure meant to create thousands of jobs, the housing fund, has never made sense to many, because it is meant to tax a relatively small number of salaried employees and their employers so that houses can be built for the poor, houses that even the relatively well-to-do won’t afford to buy.

In the fullness of time, we may still get to know whether this tax will work to fulfill a long-held public housing dream, or whether it will be a costly dud.

Many youths have always sought ways to travel and work abroad where they will earn a lot more for their labour than they ever hope to do in their own country even if they toiled from day-break to sunset. In this regard, it would be best to distinguish between those who travel to the United Kingdom and other European countries, the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia and excel in their pursuits, becoming scholars and experts in areas where they benefit their hosts.

However, there are those Kenyans who travel abroad to seek work without any particular skills. These ones lead a precarious existence doing jobs that no one else wants like cleaning chimneys, flipping burgers in fast-food eateries, or tending octogenarians in private homes. Those who get such jobs in the more advanced economies of the West where labour laws are strictly enforced can count themselves lucky, especially if they get the get better-paying jobs as cab or truck drivers, security guards, or trained nurses.

However, most migrant workers are ill-educated and cannot get jobs in Kenya, so they flood recruitment offices and are mainly sent to the Middle East as domestic workers. A great deal has been written about the miseries such people encounter in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Those young girls unlucky enough to be hired by cruel employers are over-worked, underpaid, sexually exploited, psychologically tormented and even killed with complete impunity. However, they keep going there because they have no choice.

Earlier this week, Labour and Social Protection Cabinet Secretary Florence Bore said the State was keen to send at least a million youths abroad with the aim of raising diaspora remittances from around Sh560 billion to a figure she did not disclose. But judging from the fact that right now, between three and four million youths are working abroad, it appears that what she had in mind was to raise that remittance figure by another billion or 10. Earlier, the same minister had told Parliament that 283 Kenyans have died in the past three years in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.

These are tales that Kenyans are getting used to; each year concern is raised over such grim statistics. However, these fatalities are human beings, not statistics. Until when will our people be forced to travel to countries where they are enslaved so that our ministers can crow about job creation and enhanced remittances? History is replete with horrific tales of the slave trade, but now it seems the same trade continues under the imprimatur of the State, a form of human trafficking that is both rampant and indefensible.

It would be simplistic to suggest that the government should ban “labour export” to Gulf States. Many Kenyans have, indeed, benefitted from it and built better lives for themselves. However, this should not lead to turning a blind eye to human misery. Our youths cannot continue dying so that the can help “grow the economy and strengthen the shilling”. What’s the use of a strong shilling to a young lady who returns home in a coffin?

- Mr Ngwiri is a consultant editor; [email protected]