Kenyan authorities have once again warned citizens against falling victim to job scams after it emerged that rogue agents are luring people with the promise of jobs in Southeast Asia and then end up trafficking them.
A statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora released on Friday says the Kenyan embassy in Bangkok collaborated with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), HAART Kenya and security agencies to rescue 50 Kenyans from the region in the recent past. All 50 had been victims of these labor frauds.
“Despite the media highlighting the plight of Kenyans who have fallen victim to this scam, dozens of others are still lured and travel abroad under similar arrangements,” he said.
The ministry says it has been “inundated with calls and messages from distraught Kenyans who fell and continue to fall victim to international human traffickers who are in cahoots with local recruitment agencies.”
Rogue agents from these employment agencies often help process visas and return air tickets for job seekers, but as soon as they board their flights out of Kenya, their return tickets are often cancelled, leaving job seekers deceived “at the mercy of local networks that traffic them to other destinations.”
forced into crime
The victims are then taken to various “factories” and forced to carry out criminal activities under the watchful eye of armed criminal gangs, the ministry warns.
The ministry urged Kenyans to be on the lookout for such job scams, exercise due diligence on any lucrative job offers, and also submit suspicious recruitment offers to the Director of Diaspora and Consular Services for verification.
In the past, Kenya has had to deal with numerous allegations of ill-treatment of its nationals working as domestic servants in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, including Bahrain. But this year it has been receiving distress calls from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia and other Southeast Asian states.
Last month, the government said 22 Kenyans had been rescued from Laos and warned against job scams, while earlier, another 13 were rescued from Myanmar.
Overwhelming distress calls
In August, the country said it was “overwhelmed” by distress calls from misled nationals for non-existent jobs in Southeast Asia, and warned citizens not to apply for jobs in Asian countries unless they could confirm their authenticity before leaving.
The government said it had rescued Kenyans in distress in countries including Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam after authorities received distress calls from Kenyans trapped there.
The IOM has also urged governments to act urgently to curb human trafficking in the Eastern region and the Horn of Africa, saying that human trafficking has taken on a worrying dimension, with a majority of victims exposed to violence. , sexual abuse and forced labor.
On October 10, Kenyan President William Ruto and Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania said they would strengthen the cooperation of their security agencies to curb the threat of people smuggling across their borders.
