The Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga has said companies that export workers abroad are owned by ministers who have aggravated human trafficking.
The Speaker was Wednesday addressing stakeholders on the proposed Anti-Slavery Bill 2018 at Golden Tulip Hotel in Kampala.
“Unfortunately, despite almost our 20-year battle by Parliament, we don’t seem to have made much progress along those lines. Today it is the private companies that export labor. What is annoying is that a number of ministers in this country own labor export companies. So you cannot expect them to supervise a sector because they have an interest,” Kadaga said.
She suggested that labor exportation should be an agreement between Governments as opposed to private companies if cases of human trafficking are to be mitigated.
“One of the things we have demanded from Government is that if there must export of labor, it should be Government to Government. We need to know where our people are going, we need to know what they are doing, we need to know what their terms of employment are,” she said.
Kadaga faulted Ugandans who go abroad for refusing to associate with the relevant Government Missions and when they get stuck, they cannot be helped. She said Ugandans travel abroad through formal means but end up into modern day slavery.
‘Unlike in the early days when African people were forcefully beaten, chained and shipped abroad, today, several Ugandans are taken abroad willingly and then duped,” She said.
Herbert Edmund Ariko, Soroti Municipality MP, mover of the Anti-Slavery Bill 2018, said Karamoja is becoming a key source of trafficked people, while Soroti is becoming more of a holding and transit centre to Mbale, Tororo and Busia districts.
According to Ronnie Mukundane, the communications officer at Uganda Association of External Recruitment Agencies, the umbrella organization of labor recruitment agencies in Uganda, more than 140,000 Ugandans are working in the Middle East and other Gulf states. About 16,000 are working in Saudi Arabia.
The Anti-Slavery Bill 2018 seeks to repeal the Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act, 2009 and make provision for the prohibition of slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labor, commercial sexual exploitation, debt bondage, human organ trafficking. It also seeks to provide for the repatriation and compensation of victims of the offenses.
