Tragedy of fake cruise ship jobs and millions lost

By Waweru Mugo

Kenya: The allure of big money was so compelling that none of the jobless thousands stopped to think through the deal or read between the lines. When the attractive mid-2001 advertisement in the local press came up, Kenyans snapped up the cruise ship jobs offer within days.

After all, didn’t the United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based Al-Najat Marine Shipping Company promise heaven right here on earth? And who would not seize the once in a lifetime luxury opportunity aboard the most famous and glamorous vessels in the world sailing the high seas.

The offer was too good - a non-taxed monthly salary of about US$800 (more than KSh62,000) replete with hefty overtime bonuses, visits to exquisite modern and ancient cities in the Arab world, America and Europe and still not paying a dime for accommodation, food and medical expenses.

So, for the likes of Mohamed Ahmed, then 26 years old, the conditional payment of about Sh9,500 for registration, medical examination and passport was no big deal. Like the rest who were too gullible to think twice when the deal is too good, his eyes were firmly on the ultimate prize - employment.

In Parliament, MPs made fervent noise to force the government to speed up the processing of requisite documents such as passports and medical certificates to enable unemployed youths secure the promised 50,000 vacancies. They sought assurances that the government would not be a stumbling block to Kenyans’ flight to the promised Canaan.

But then, matters took an ugly turn when hawk-eyed seafarers’ rights/lobby groups and dissatisfied applicants started asking questions.

Sh100m lost

Labour and Human Resources Development Minister Joseph Ngutu, whose office had given the deal a clean bill of health would a year later announce to a crestfallen nation that there were no jobs after all. By then, at least 10,031 Kenyans had lost a combined amount of Sh100 million. Thousands more on the waiting list were lucky they had not processed the mandatory documents when the lid blew off the deal. Ngutu’s assistant Jesse Maizs would later confirm that up to 25,000 had sought the lucrative jobs that never were.

Abdi Tari Sasura, the Saku MP would state in the House, “Personally, I paid about Sh28,000 for my constituents to go and work for the cruise ship firm, which ended up becoming a hoax.”

“Many people lost everything in the scam, including their houses. In some cases, entire families sank all their money into sponsoring one person to work in jobs that promised to pay each month what in Kenya, for example, was double the average annual national wage,” Andrew Mwangura, the Secretary General of Seafarers Union of Kenya, a maritime labour movement remembers.

In an interview, Mwangura said it hurt to note that despite warning from the New York based Centre for Seafarers’ Rights and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), corrupt Kenyan government officials harboured or co-operated with Pakistani/UK citizen Muhammad Ali Pasha whose Al-Najat Marine Shipping Company conned thousands of Kenyan job seekers into paying for non-existent work.

The local and international unions had raised the red flag over glaring irregularities in the jobs offer even as the government and recruiting agencies maintained they were for real.  The Kenyan offer was extended to anyone and everyone, with or without experience.

Additionally, Article 2 of the nternational Labour Organisation Convention No. 9 for Establishing Facilities for Finding Employment for Seamen prohibits the charging of fees for finding employment for seafarers. Yet in the scam, jobseekers were required to pay hefty registration and medical fees.

Again, observes Mwangura, in order to be eligible to work on a cruise vessel, candidates must possess a merchant mariner’s document issued by the flag authority of the vessel on which the applicant will work. No such documents were ever prepared in the first place.

He adds, “These were jobs offered by a company whose bona fides were apparently guaranteed by the government.”

25,000 job seekers

Notably, the government had in June 2001 briefly stopped the recruitment following a hue and cry over the high medical examination and registration fees demanded.

Maizs, also Eldoret South MP explained that a 4-day stoppage had been put in place to “allow the formalities of the contract to be finalised”.

He would explain on August 7th, “The recruitment…is firmly on course. To date, the agents have registered about 25,000 job seekers. The Ministry is supervising the process to ensure that fairness, transparency and compliance with the national labour laws and international conventions are followed.”

To safeguard the interests of Kenyans, Maizs was categorical that the Commissioner of Labour and the National Employment Bureau were monitoring the recruitment process. He added, “A final agreement will be signed between Al-Najat Marine Shipping Company and the Government of Kenya before the departure of the recruits in January 2002”.

But this departure never arrived. Instead, the exercise would remain shrouded in mystery, even as it gobbled up hard-earned money from poor youths, men and women yearning for greener pastures in distant lands. Ngutu eventually outed the truth - the whole business was a hoax!

It was in this July of 2002 that Norman Nyaga, the Kamukunji MP who would emerge as the face in Parliament of those seeking justice for the victims demanded (through a Question by Private Notice) that the government launch investigations into the involvement in the recruitment of among others: five local employment agents, Kenya’s UAE Embassy official Ibrahim Mohamed, former acting Director of Employment George Hamisi Odenyo, Dr Pravin Patel of Park Road Nursing Home and Pasha. He also asked the Labour minister to explain the authenticity of the jobs as well as reveal the terms and conditions of service for the recruits.

A not so amused Nyaga would ask, “Could the minister explain why the Government took no heed after it was warned by the International Centre for Sea Piracy on 24th July, 2001, and on 15th November, 2001 that these jobs did not exist? Also, Article 2 of the International Labour Convention, to which Kenya is a signatory, does not allow anybody to pay any recruitment fees to anybody before securing a job. Why did the Government not intervene on time, as opposed to crying foul in documents?”

The government (through Ngutu), with egg on its face, explaned that  some information was hidden away by unpatriotic staff. “We did not intervene, because we did not have that information. The information was sent to one of our officers, but he decided not to pass it over to his seniors.”

No refund

Assurances that a fact-finding mission was ongoing in the UAE and investigations by the CID were on, did nothing to sooth angry MPs. Dr Shem Ochuodho demanded that senior officers involved in fleecing the jobseekers be investigated rather other than zeroing in on the “junior” Ibrahim and Odenyo.

Ngutu dashed hopes of a refund of the millions of shillings to the con victims when he told Parliament that only the courts would order such. A distraught Mohamed from Mombasa was quoted by PANA saying, “This minister must be sacked. He knew all along that we were being conned yet he did nothing to stop the scandal. Which government can stand aside and watch as a big number of its citizens are being fleeced by conmen.”

Even as calls for his resignation reverberated across the land, suffice it to say that this is Kenya. Ministers and civil servants rarely bite the bullet and take responsibility for the State’s failings. With time, the scandal only dissolves into thin air, and Kenyans forget quickly.

Minister Ngutu’s promise: “Whoever may have committed a crime (involvement in the scam) will be dealt with in accordance with the laws of this land,” remains just that.

To date, findings of the investigations into the scam remain tucked away in a 209-page report marked “Confidential”, certainly gathering dust in government offices.

In the meantime, Mohamed and others can only count their losses from the scam, including lives ruined and people impoverished through sheer theft and joblessness.