MASAKA, UGANDA: Another family in Masaka city has been left in shock and dismay after learning the demise of their beloved daughter, a one Zaitun Zawedde who died mysteriously in Saudi Arabia she had gone for work.
Zawedde was announced dead two hours after she spoke to her sister in Uganda. This left the family in utter shock!
Background
According to a report filed by DailyMonitor and NTV Uganda, Zaituni Zawedde left her Busense village, Kimaanya-Kabonera division in Masaka City in 2019 on the course to look for greener pastures in Saudi Arabia.
Zawedde’s trip to the Middle East country was facilitated by a labour export company, Forbes Enterprise Limited which had secured her a two-year contract as a domestic worker.
Her sister, Ms Nuru Nanteza, says she spoke to Zawedde on January 20, 2022 at around 2pm.
However, two hours later, she received a phone call from Zawedde’s boss who said she (Zawedde) had passed on.
“I suspect my sister was killed. How come she never told me she was suffering from any disease when we talked on phone! We need a report about her death,” Ms Nanteza said.
According to Nanteza, Zawedde’s contract was supposed to expire this month (February).
However, her brother, Huzairu Kikabuzi, insists government needs to investigate the labour export firm located in Ntinda-Kiwatule, Kampala on grounds that they have approached the company mangers several times seeking help to return Zawedde’s body but in vain.
“After getting the news of the death of our sister, we immediately went to Forbes Enterprise Limited seeking help to return her body but the manager sent us away saying we should go and cry out to the government, and not them,” Mr Kikabuzi said.
He says his four other sisters are still working in Saudi Arabia as house maids and he’s worried they may all end up like Zawedde.
“I had five sisters in Saudi Arabia and one is gone. What if the others also go just like Zawedde! Why is it that government doesn’t follow up on our relatives abroad yet they collect taxes from them?”Mr Kikabuzi wondered.
Their mother, Ms Justine Nakalema said Zawedde travelled to Saudi Arabia to pursue what she thought would be a better life after her father abandoned the family.
“Given the dire condition we were living in, my daughter decided to go to Saudi Arabia to work since their father abandoned us. She had already constructed us a house and our lives had started to change but see now what has happened. Government should help us return her body,”Ms Nakalema said.
Mr Abdallah Kayonde from Migrant Workers Voice, an organization that advocates for migrant workers’ rights wondered why Forbes Enterprise LTD still operates yet it is among the labour export companies whose licenses were revoked by government.
“When government cancels licenses of such companies, it needs to implement and make sure the companies are no longer operating. Government needs to follow up on people who were taken through such companies to avoid the worst case scenarios like that of Zawedde,”Mr Kayonde said.
When contacted on phone, the labour firm’s manger, Mr Geoffrey Katusiime, said Zawedde’s issues cannot be resolved through media.
“I told those people (Zawedde’s family) who gave you my number to stop disturbing me. They should know that the issue can never be resolved through media,” Mr Katusiime said before hanging up.
The Minister for Gender, Labor and Social Development, Ms Betty Amongi told this reporter that government intends to start monitoring Ugandan migrant workers because labour export companies alone cannot solve challenges faced by migrant workers.
“We are going to establish a committee which will be monitoring the wellbeing of our Ugandan migrant workers in countries like Saudi Arabia because we have received many complaints that arise from domestic workers there,” Ms Amongi said.
Ms Amongi said even after suspension, the labour export company still has partnership with Saudi Arabia and that they should be able to sort the problems that may have occurred.
Zawedde’s death occurred three days after the dismembered body of 26-year-old Milly Namazzi who went to Saudi Arabia to work as a housemaid was returned to Uganda.
Namazzi whose contract was also about to expire, was killed in Egypt on December 5, 2022, leaving her family in Kagezi Village in Masaka City, wondering how she ended up there yet she had been working in Saudi Arabia.
A postmortem report from Mulago national referral hospital showed that Namazzi’s private parts were removed with her body subjected to multiple severe beatings before she died.
Uganda Bureau of Statistics and International Labour Organization (ILO) indicate that young Ugandan women-aged between 15-29 years- face a number of hurdles in the labour market, from higher unemployment rates to lower wages. As a result, many young women like Namazzi and Zawedde who try to escape unemployment and poverty at home, often end up as domestic workers in the Middle East where over the years, there has been systematic documentation of cases of exploitation, physical and/or sexual abuse, and even fatalities.
In late 2015, Saudi Arabia and Uganda signed a deal which could have provided as many as two million jobs for Ugandans in the oil-rich Gulf nation according to the Gulf Africa Review. But the deal was terminated in January 2016 after Parliament banned the transit of migrant workers to Saudi Arabia following shocking revelations of abuse and torture.
An inter-ministerial task force was formed to tackle the abuse and exploitation of Ugandan migrant domestic workers immediately after the issuing of the ban, but in May 2017, the ban was reversed following the signing of bilateral agreements with Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
However, in August this year, Uganda said it was to review the agreements with a number of countries, particularly in the Middle East, as cases of abuse of migrant workers continue to rise.
While meeting Mr Sanusi Tejan Savage, the Chief of Mission for the UN Agency on Migration in Uganda in Kampala on August 17, 2021, Ms Amongi said the continued reports of maltreatment of migrant workers, even in countries where bilateral labour agreements exist, was of concern to Uganda.
She said her ministry had proposed a review of these agreements to bridge the loopholes.
Uganda currently has bilateral labour management agreements with Saudi Arabia, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The agreements are meant to foster the overall safety and wellbeing of Ugandan migrant workers.
Ms Amongi said the online External Employment Information System would also be scaled up to allow the logging in of complaints and tracking the responses. Currently, the system only has options for registered labour export companies to log in.
“This will greatly help us in tracing the complaints logged in and what action or inaction was taken,” she said.
She also revealed that government had agreed to deploy labour attachés to countries where Uganda has a huge number of migrant workers to improve the turnaround time in responding to distressed workers.
She said Uganda government was working to sign bilateral agreements with other countries, including Qatar, Oman, Turkey, among others, where there is already a big number of Ugandans.
She commended International Organisation for Migration (IOM) for having collaborated with the ministry to develop a pre-departure training curriculum for Ugandans destined to work abroad, and said the trainings have helped in preparing the workers to absorb culture shocks, religion difference and work ethic, among other parametres. She said this has a direct bearing on the how the workers progress at duty.
There are over 80,000 Ugandans working in Middle East countries, according to government. But many have reported being physically assaulted, sexually abused and in worst case scenarios returned to Uganda in body bags.
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