Qatar has closed 12 Kenyan employment agencies following pressure from the government and trade unions to ensure better treatment of migrant workers in the Gulf states.
This was revealed on Sunday during talks in Doha between Francis Atvoli, Secretary General of the Central Organization of Trade Unions (KOTU) and Qatar's Labor Minister Ali bin Samikh Al Marri.
The recruitment offices that have been closed include Starch, Anand, Sunrise, Dubai, Frame, Al Adam, Absher, Al Methak, Resala, Altaan and Althabat. These agencies can no longer engage in recruiting workers or concluding contracts with employers.
Qatari officials said the agencies violated the law and the operation was part of monitoring efforts to protect the rights of employers of domestic workers.
Mr Atvoli also expressed concern about the working conditions of Kenyans in Qatar, urging the authorities there to protect the lives and welfare of workers.
Mr Al Marie committed to ensuring that Kenyans, especially domestic workers, were protected, adding that Qatar was shutting down employment agencies that were used to infiltrate Kenyans into the Middle East.
"The minister said that they are currently in the process of canceling the operations of Kenyan-owned employment agencies. At least 12 licenses have been revoked so far."
Kotu recommended that the Kenyan government establish a government-to-government relationship with Qatar. This will ensure that the government and not the agencies oversee the negotiations on the terms and conditions of Kenyan workers in Qatar.
These measures to streamline the labor sector in the Gulf state come as Qatar has extended the probation period for domestic workers from three to nine months and set a maximum price for domestic workers to be recruited.
Inspection teams were created to scrutinize recruitment agencies and ensure the implementation of new forms of employment contracts for domestic workers.
Many Kenyans working in Qatar have raised several complaints, including poor remuneration, physical and emotional abuse, and the confiscation of their passports and travel documents by their employers.
In August 2018, dozens of Kenyans were stranded in Qatar for lack of travel documents and air tickets after being outed with their employers.
Kenyans, most of whom were recruited by Mombasa-based agencies, said they were suffering in the Arab country after protesting working conditions.
“Salary was our biggest issue. We were not being paid on time and sometimes we used to work for four months without pay so we decided to boycott duty in 2017,” said one of them.
But the abuse of Kenyans is not limited to Qatar. Last year, the foreign ministry revealed that 89 Kenyans, most of them domestic workers, died in Saudi Arabia over the past two years. Interestingly, Riyadh told Nairobi that most of the deaths were from cardiac arrest.
Appearing before the National Assembly's Labor Committee in September 2021, Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs Machariya Kamau said that all Kenyan deaths in Saudi Arabia in the past two years were suspicious.
“We have compared deaths, so it is not possible that you have three deaths in Qatar, one in UAE, two in Kuwait, nine in Oman, two in Bahrain and you have 40-50 in another country because the numbers May be big but they are not that big,” he said.
"It is unlikely that all these young people are dying of cardiac arrest."