Investigative Report By Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City
AS many as close to 200 expatriate workers from India and Pakistan could be engaged on full time jobs inside several sugar mills in Western Kenya on work permits which are suspected to have been issued irregularly.
The foreign workers mainly fitters, welders, electrical and motor vehicle mechanics, fitters, carpenters riggers, masons, cashiers, accounts clerks, cane-yard clerks and even time keepers, boiler attendants.
Impeccable multiple sources have told us that a source of recruitment of these unqualified foreign worker s a Hindu Temple located in Kisumu City. And that for these foreigners to access cheap jobs in Kenya, they are being made to part with colossal amount of money in bribery and kick-backs, which is paid out through an unknown Hindu Priest who is allegedly acting as a conduit.
Transactions take place in highly secret hideouts, mostly inside hotel rooms at one of the posh hotels or inside the temple.
All this happens while hundreds of better qualified Kenyans are jobless. Kenya has trained hundreds of thousands of artisans and technicians ever since independence 48 and it is therefore shameless of the country to recruit and engaged these semi illiterate Indians and Pakistanis.
The natural and common rule is that the country could source and engage an expatriate worker in a specific case where there is n o qualified Kenyan to fill the gap.
But what is happening in the sugar industry is a big shame to the Kenyan nation. These unqualified foreign workers are being recruited through established agencies in India and Pakistan.
In some case these foreign workers comes on a visit permit, while other come pretending to be priests or preachers on preaching missions and within months, the same people engage themselves on full time employment fully issued with work permit.
Do we need them really?.
A common say is that the “sugar industry is a milking cow” and it true to those who coined those word, the specification of jobs in which these foreigners are engaged could as well be competently and efficiently performed by local Form Four school leavers.
The practices is said to be so common in the Sugar Mills owned by Asian investors. The management of these sugar mills are said to be working in cohort with some unpatriotic officials mainly in the Ministry of Immigration and Registration of Persons, which is charged with the sole responsibility of issuing work permits to foreigners in whatever categories.
Truly speaking Kenya is not short of qualified welders and fitters nor is the country experiencing acute shortage of artisans and office clerks?
Is the Kenya government applying double standard by telling the ordinary Kenyans that it was committed to creating hundreds of jobs for the youths annually, and on one hand issuing the work permits to people e who do not deserve it?
The scam is said to have spilled into our neighboring countries of Uganda and Tanzania. Indians and Pakistani recruited via Kisumu are said to have flooded the jobs market inside Uganda sugar mills at Kinyara, Lugazi and Kakira and to an extent Kagera Sugar Work in South Western Tanzania.
One may be left to wonder why has the government has succumbed to pressure from the investors and allow them to import their unqualified kiths and kins from India and Pakistan while our better qualified sons and daughter have remained permanently unemployed.
The Sugar Mills in Western Kenya where the imported unqualified expatriates are alleged to have infiltrated include West Knya Sugar Company, Butali Sugar Company both in Kakamega County, Kibos Sugar and Allied Industries in Kisumu County and Sukari Sugar Industry in Ndhiwa district in Homa-Bay County. The fifth is the Trans-Mara Sugar Company I Trans-Mara district within Narok County in the South Rift.
If the government is not that of “Double Speak” then it should appoint a special committee to carry out forensic auditing of jobs specifications and work in these sugar companies. so as to ascertain the truth.
The provisional figures in our know says Kibos is leading the pack with close to 39 expatriate workers followed by West Kenya about 30, Butali,West Kenya Sugar Company 25, Sukari Industries {Ndhiwa} 21 and Trans-Mara Sugar Company 28. These are just provisional figures, the number of foreign worker in this establishment could well be higher than the figures mentioned above.
It defeats all the logic that Mumias Sugar Company in Mumias, which is producing the largest quantity of brown sugar per day with close to 7,000 gunny bags of made sugar is managed and manned by local Kenyans from the to office messengers and sweepers. Why should our government allow the Asian owned sugar mills which are not even producing half of what Mumias is producing should be allowed to fill all he jobs in their establishment with foreign workers?
The other aspect of this shameful double standard policy by the Kenya government is that local Kenyans workers employed in the Asian owned sugar mills are just working as casual and no letters of appointment.
Between Francis Atwoli, the COTU {Kenya} Secretary General who doubles as the General secretary of the Kenya Agricultural and plantation Worker Union and the Immigration and Registration of Persons Minister Gerald Otieno Kajwang’ who is sleeping on the job? I think the two senior Kenyans owed an explanation to the public over the issue of foreign workers.
The Indians and Pakistanis are raking between Kshs 25,000 to Kshs 50,000 and even above.
These expatiate are not subjected to mandatory salary deduction such s NSSF NHIF, and yet they work and earns money in Kenya.
We have come across some cases where the Immigration officials rounds up the poor Maasais watchmen from Tanzania or Lioliondo on the Kenyan side of the border prosecutes them and have them repatriated back to their country. Why not do the same with these undesirable and unqualified expatriates from India and Pakistan?
In the sugar mills the highest paid African workers earn between 12,000 and 20,000 but most of those working in the categories of clerks, store men are within the 7,000 and 8,000 brackets. But most of them without letter of appointment specifying conditions and terms o services.
In one factory even a Cooke who is making meals for the expatriates is himself an expatriate blowing over 40,000. Surely has got the room for an expatriate cooks?.
What has gone wrong with our outspoken parliamentarians? Has the Mututho le Parliamentary Select Committee on Agriculture visited some of these factories and inquired about employment system?
Why has Bonny Khalwale buried his head in the sand and yet some of these things happens within in home turf of Kakamega County?
Ends