I have quite a good number of friends who’ve decided to pursue their carees abroad. By abroad, I refer mainly to Dubai because nowadays it’s very easy for one to get a job as a domestic worker there.

However, in the recent past, the picture painted of Dubai has always been in the bad light where many Kenyans working there have complained of being harassed and mistreated.

This paints a picture of the huge youth unemployment rate in Kenya and to this effect,one million youths will benefit from a program that seeks to equip them with job skills outside the country.
Kenyans seeking jobs with Qatar Airways submit their documents at the Intercontinental Hotel in Nairobi during a recruitment exercise on April 20, 2014.

Labour and East African Affairs Cabinet Secretary Phyllis Kandie has said her ministry will train more than one million youth for jobs abroad in the next two years to ease unemployment.

According to the Labour CS Phyllis Kandie, the programme borrows from a successful labour migration model employed in the Philippines.

In justifying the programme, the Labour CS also cited the example of a Singaporean company that has been looking for Kenyan ship builders.

“There will be a well-planned system of promoting labour migration. The workers will receive pre-departure training before embarking on the jobs abroad,” said Ms Kandie when addressing the National Industrial Training Authority board.

“Foreigners see what we have. We have skilled labour in this country and we want to scale that labour up not only for local consumption but also for international use. We don’t want our youth languishing in the villages without work,” said Ms Kandie.

This comes at a time where there have been numerous complains about the quality of graduates churned from the Kenyan Universities. There has been a concern that youths are theory-minded and lack the technical know how that is desirable to many employers.

Meanwhile, the CS said her ministry was sending officials to the Middle East countries where there have been reports of mistreatment of Kenyan workers.

We hope that this program is going to be implemented as soon as possible and hopefully reduce the gap of youth unemployment even by a tiny percentage.

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