Kenyan women are not to blame for travelling to Saudi Arabia

The girls that travel to work in Saudi Arabia despite the many reported cases of suffering and death are desperate. They are not entirely to blame for taking the gamble in the hope of earning a better living.

Take Diana, for example. She is said to have travelled there to look for money to pay for her university education. Many other young girls have taken the risk hoping to elevate their families from poverty. Stories of young mothers who have left their young children with grandmothers in the hope of coming back better are many.

Unscrupulous recruiting agencies have, sadly, exploited the vulnerability and desperation of these helpless women to send them to slavery through unofficial, illegal routes. So, instead of passing the buck to the helpless Kenyans, the Government should address the existing gaps to ensure that Kenyans working in the gulf countries are secure. The only way to stop young women from travelling to work as slaves in Saudi is to provide enough job opportunities in the formal and informal sectors with good returns.

In 2019, the National Assembly's departmental committee on Labour and Social Welfare is said to have travelled to Riyadh on a 'fact-finding mission on the welfare of migrant workers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia'. One of their recommendations was a more thorough process of vetting the employment agencies to weed out rogue ones sending Kenyans to slavery.

The more long lasting solution, however, is the improvement of the labour market in Kenya. We can blame recruiting agencies, Saudi employers and travelling Kenyans, but the bottom line is that Kenyans travelling to work as domestic workers in the Middle East do so for lack of better opportunities back home.

The incoming administration has promised to empower the common mwananchi through their bottom-up development model, so the plight of the many 'hustlers' trading their freedom for a stab at a better life should be top of the government's priorities.

-Dr Kalangi Kiambati is a Communication Trainer and Consultant, Kenyatta University