Kenyan recruiting agencies sourcing for jobs abroad, especially in the Middle East have decried the failure to have their operating licenses renewed by the government.
The agencies say that this coupled with more time required to attain training requirements has held thousands of unemployed Kenyans from travelling abroad to work.
The over 500 recruiting agencies have cast aspersions on the National Employment Authority (NEA) citing that it is riddled with corruption which is what has made renewal of licenses for their agencies hard.
This, they say, have put most of their clients working abroad under exploitation while others continue wallowing in unemployment.
Most of the agencies had their licenses expire in 2019 and 2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, it became harder for them to renew them.
According to the players in this industry under the banner “Face Of Change” NEA has been overlooking license renewals and only issuing new licenses at a cost of Ksh500,000.
“I have been put on hold for more than one year. Up to now, we are waiting for NEA to assign an officer to come and inspect our offices, which is not forthcoming. This is despite meeting all the requirement,” Kamau, a director of a recruiting agency in Nairobi told the Star.
Former ASMAK chairman Harun Ambenj and now an interim director for Face of Change added: “We cannot meet the demand for labour out there with these types of bottlenecks. We will lose out to our competition such as Uganda, Nigeria and Ghana who are not making it difficult for people to secure employment out there.”
The government in a statement issued a week ago by Labour Cabinet Secretary Simon Chelugui maintained that at least 300 private agencies were registered in 2020.
The new agencies were tasked with job placement for Kenyans abroad.
However, new guidelines for agencies recruiting workers to job markets abroad, especially househelp jobs published by the National Industrial Training Authority (NITA) have been a hard tackle.
Unskilled Kenyans looking for these types of jobs are now required to undergo a training of between 21-30 days and pay between Ksh8,000 and 25,000.
The training comes before departure of the workers. NITA reduced the training school to 17 from 64.
Each month, there are about 12,000 marked to undergo the training. With the 17 accredited institutions, they can only accommodate 2,024 people. They are only allowed to leave for jobs abroad if they pass the training.
In February this year, Saudi Arabia has announced 12,000 unskilled job positions for Kenyans but 20,000 visas for potential workers have not been serviced, Ambenje added.
He said NITA’s decision to vet unskilled workers through an exam will lock many people out of opportunities working abroad.
NITA vetted 67,521 Kenyans in the last year. This is against a 300,000 labour demand abroad according to Chelugui.
