Uganda Parliament Bans Workers' Travel To Arab Countries

The Ugandan parliament has endorsed a motion to totally ban the travel of domestic workers to Arab countries.



In a heated argument on Thursday, legislators criticized the government for encouraging foreign companies to export young girls to Arab countries to work as domestic workers.



Margaret Kyomuhangi a lawmaker from the ruling National Resistance Movement, told the house that during her last travel with Speaker Rebecca Kadaga for a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Geneva, Switzerland, they were told horrible stories of how Ugandan workers suffer in Arab countries.



"The Ugandan officials in Dubai explicitly told us how impossible it is for any maid to be comfortable in the Arab world," she said.



"Our girls are taken as maids, exploited, and sodomized. The conditions are just impossible for any black person to work in the Arab countries as a maid," she added.



She went on to plead with the speaker to seize the opportunity to ban the exportation of Ugandan maids to Arab countries amidst applause.



The speaker then added her voice, saying; "I was too traumatized by what I heard from the Ugandan mission, and upon return I told our local officials about it."



Their comments followed a speech read out to the parliament by Suleiman Madada, the Minister of State for Disability and Elderly, on behalf of Minister for Labor, Gender and Social Development Rukia Isanga Nakadama.



Madada explained that the gender ministry has the mandate to promote "decent employment opportunities and labor productivity."



It is for this reason that he told the parliament the ministry is working with the Saudi Manpower Solutions Company which he said had "expressed interest in recruitment of migrant workers, to Saudi Arabia particularly."



The minister said that the company had pledged to carry out a number of procedures before the girls are taken to Saudi Arabia.



"The girls will be trained, have access to communication facilities, and be given health insurance, and the company shall open for them bank accounts," said Madada.



"The government is going to send two officials - one male and one female - to receive and handle complaints from Ugandan workers there and to ensure that the agreed standards are complied with.



"This is why we want to experiment with Saudi Manpower Solutions Company," he added.



But opposition lawmaker Betty Nambooze dismissed the minister's proposal and initiated a motion on what she described as a "matter of urgent importance."



"We are living in an error where slave trade has been reintroduced and disguised as exportation of maids and other workers especially to Arab countries," she told an agitated parliament.



"What is being done in Uganda is modern slave trade and it is so hurting that even the government has licensed these slave trade companies," she went on to say.



"I therefore move that this house resolves to handle all issues concerning labor exportations, especially of maids, until the ministry comes up with very clear guidelines of how these people are exported."



The lawmaker stressed that she was moving the motion "well knowing that most of the victims of this bad trade are women and young girls who are tricked into going to these foreign countries with promises of other jobs, before having their passports confiscated."



"These companies sell them at a fee and this is slave trade which cannot be allowed in this era so I move [with the motion]."



Nambooze went on to plead: "I beg the members that you support this motion that we freeze exportation of our girls, especially to Arab countries."



Without hesitation, the speaker stated: "I move the motion that we want a total ban." The motion then passed with a majority of votes.



In 2007, an association known as the Uganda Veterans Development Limited secured a contract with Al-Khadamit bureau for services in Iraq to recruit housemaids from Uganda. The first group of girls left in August 2008 and by June 2009, 148 girls had been taken to Iraq as housemaids.



In May 2009 three girls lodged complaints with the gender ministry, citing lack of contracts, long hours of daily work, and working without pay. The girls also said they had been forced to have sex, beaten and starved and they had been sent back to Uganda without their personal property.



The allegations forced the ministry to ban recruitment of maids to Iraq in July 2009.



According to the gender ministry, current figures indicate that 90 Ugandans, including 73 females, had been trafficked to Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, India, South Africa, Bahrain, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and China for work.



By Halima Athumani



englishnewsa@aa.com.tr - Kampala