President Yoweri Museveni had described as “wrong” and “temporary” the rising trend of Ugandan youths leaving the country to work as housemaids in the Middle East.
Museveni said on Tuesday that the growing externalization of Ugandan labour was not what he and the RM government envisaged while taking power. He also blamed it on Ugandans and their leaders, not listening carefully to the RM’s economic advice.
“There are countries which externalize their children such as the Philippines. But we also have other countries like South Korea which don’t.. You don’t see them all over the place; and this is the vision of the NRM.” Museveni said.
The President was speaking at the 5th Memorial Service of former Prosecutor Joan Kagezi who was assassinated in March 2015 in Kampala.
Speaking at the event, Ms Agnes Igoye the Deputy Chair of the National Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Office at the Internal Affairs Ministry, revealed that a growing number of Ugandan youths are fleeing the country to work under harsh conditions in the middle east. “Majority of the people who are moving abroad are women who are heading to the Middle East for labour externalization.” She said.
Most of these Igoye said, are leaving voluntarily due to a number of push factors including low incomes at family level, high unemployment and violence against women,while others are victims of human trafficking. But President Museveni in response said this wouldn’t have been a problem if Ugandans
But President Museveni in response said this wouldn’t have been a problem if Ugandans had adhered to his message of commercialized agriculture.
“We don’t want our children to go and work for other people; but the problem we have been having is resistance to our vision,” he said. “We are now 43 million people.
If you assume that there are 5 people in each family, we have 9 Million families. Many of these families have family land. We have been telling the whole country how to create jobs… that you can transform the pleasantly very quickly, from substance farming,” he said.
“We can create 50 million jobs in agriculture alone if families who have land listen to our message.Those ones who have land please work for the stomach and the pocket. Those who are going abroad are going to provide a service but a bad service of working in houses. There are better
services which can employ out people.”
