Activists have rejected the speaker's directive to the Gender, Labour and Social Development Committee to investigate the ownership of labor export firms.
On Tuesday last week, the speaker of parliament Anita Among issued the directive following the recent death of Lydia Ayila, a resident of Kayunga District in Saudi Arabia.
The Speaker intervened after the Kayunga District Woman Member of Parliament, Idah Nantaba brought Ayila’s plight to the attention of Parliament on November 9, 2022.
The legislator told Parliament that Saudi authorities demanded US $3,400, an equivalent of 12.768 million Shillings to repatriate the deceased's body or they bury her in a public cemetery. The Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development only managed to pay US$ 1,000 (3.755 million Shillings).
Touched by the story, Among contributed US$2,400 (9 million Shillings) to Ayila’s mother to facilitate the repatriation of her remains.
She further tasked the Gender, Labour and Social Development Committee led by Flavia Kabahenda, the Kyegegwa District Woman Representative to liaise with the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development to conduct an in-depth investigation into the ownership of the labor export firms and report their findings to the House.
However, this has not gone down well with Marriam Mwiza, the Executive Director of Overseas Workers Voice Uganda - OWVU, which Advocates for the rights of migrant workers who describes the proposed Parliamentary probe as a ‘sham’.
Mwiza instead implores the Government to renegotiate better bilateral agreements with the Middle East Countries to abolish the ‘kafala’ system, which he says gives private citizens and companies almost total control over migrant workers.
She noted that the organization has been able to directly repatriate 600 migrant workers from the Gulf Countries Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – UAE.
She further revealed that during the same period, the organization also repatriated 54 bodies of Ugandan migrant workers who lost their lives in the Middle East. The latest bodies included that of Sharifah Birungi and Salima Babirye, both of whom were externalized in Saudi Arabia where they died in August 2022
