Premier Recruitment mourns Ugandan security guard who died on duty in Qatar

KAMPALA, UGANDA: Phillip Kule, a Ugandan security guard who has been working in Doha, Qatar has died while on duty, Premier Recruitment Ltd (PR), Uganda’s leading labor export agency has announced.

According to PR, the agency that deployed Kule to Qatar on June 9th this year, he started employment on June 24 as a security guard but is said to have collapsed while on duty and was immediately rushed to the hospital.

He, however, later died early this month on Thursday, August 5 after spending weeks in hospital.

A statement issued by the company that this website has seen confirmed that Kule succumbed to acute heart failure as confirmed by Dr Muhammed HAL-Thani from Public Health Department in his autopsy report.

While speaking to the media at their offices in Kampala on Wednesday, Premier Recruitment’s General Manager, Ms. Neelam Badoni said the company was able to retrieve the deceased’s body and deport it back within 10 days for the family and relatives to accord him a decent burial.

“We received the news of Mr. Kule’s death from compass catering services on August 6 and we have worked jointly with the Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development to ensure that the body is brought back to his family so that they can carry out their family and cultural rituals and accord him a decent burial,” said Ms. Badoni.

She added; “This is the first time we are experiencing such an incident and we are doing our best to make sure that the family of the deceased get full support from us because he was their breadwinner.”

Ms. Badoni, however, said that the deceased was in good health when he traveled because one of the requirements set by the government for labour export companies is conducting thorough medical checks before sending deploying a person to work abroad.

“Candidates have to go through several medical tests in order to be allowed to proceed with the deployment process. The medical conditions must be fulfilled before they start paperwork,” she said.

“When we deploy a certain candidate in any country we do monitor them to see how they are coping in the new environment because it’s not easy to adapt quickly. We usually guide them on how they can manage,” she added.

She further explained that the monitoring units were set up following reports that a number of people they sent to Saudi Arabia and Qatar were facing several challenges, ranging from welfare. 

Government through ministries of Internal Affairs and Gender, recently suspended up to eleven external labour recruitment agencies, citing forgeries and other abuses such as trafficking and extortion.