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SOCIAL CONDITION
Thousands of young Kenyans, desperate for work, have been taken in by conmen who promise them jobs abroad
Some time ago, hundreds of Kenyan nurses were in turmoil. What had happened? They’d applied for jobs in Europe through what turned out to be a conman. He left them in thin air and took off with their job application fees. About the same time, a news item appeared in the Standard (issue of 16 April 2002) stating that about ten thousand Kenyans seeking jobs on cruise ships abroad, would leave the country by mid-May. They would be given training, presumably in the United Arab Emirates, followed by placing on the best leisure ships of Europe and America.
The announcement stated that the outward bound Kenyan jobseekers, would be flown out in Boeing jets provided by a local airline each capable of carrying 575 passengers. The whole operation would be completed in ten weeks! By the end of April, the same conman apologised in a short news item saying there would be further delay in cruise ship jobs and promised that matters would be rectified as soon as possible.
Promises of jobs which failed to materialise has been going on for more than a year. There’s obviously a great of controversy over this so-called «recruitment», but people want to go so badly that they’re brushing aside every caution and the opinions of maritime experts who have stated that the whole job exercise was «too good to be true.» If only they’d stopped to think, they’d realize there is simply no way ten thousand Kenyans are going to fly into the job of their dreams in Arabia, to be employed. But such is the power of conmanship, Kenya youths must pay a price for their shattered dreams! (The promised jobs were to be with a Gulf-based shipping company.
Hundreds of millions of shillings have changed hands in the naïve trust that local recruiting agents were doing something to benefit young Kenyans seeking an opening in cruise ship jobs abroad. However, the young Kenyan applicants failed to understand that those cruise ships abroad already had their full complement of employees who certainly wouldn’t be given up their work places to any Johnny-come-latelies.
Desperate for work
An employee at a hospital in the Eastland’s area of Nairobi said many thousands of the cruise ship job-seekers came in for medical checks at his hospital. Initially, he was so impressed by what they had to say and their «job prospects», that he was on the point of bringing in his son who had just finished school, to join the bandwaggon and share in the spoils of whatever was going on. This particular hospital worker, however, now admits that while he was first of all completely taken in, as time passed and so many people were coming for medical checkups, his suspicions were aroused.
People were even coming up from Mombasa on the coast in their own hired buses. One young man from Mombasa who came into the hospital was willing to give the job a try, but confessed he was suspicious of the whole set-up. After all, Mombasa port is the place to look for a sea-faring job, not inland in a city like Nairobi! After nearly five or six months of waiting he finally conceded that the whole thing was beginning to look like a set-up.
The first group of job seekers was due to travel more than a year ago. One excuse followed another, but they did not go. Other travel dates were fixed but these too came and went.
The authorities in Kenya should be on their guard that no more gullible young Kenyans, desperate for work, should be taken in by such conmen.
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PeaceLink 2002 - Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgement