Kenya: Lack of Laws Condemns Job-Seekers to Slavery
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The Nation (Nairobi)
5 October 2008
Posted to the web 6 October 2008
Ken Opala
Nairobi
File Number Traffic/27/2005 gathers dust at the offices of Fida Kenya. It hasn't been opened since 2005 after its subject went missing.
A few kilometres away, another file on the same subject is open. The Kenya police seeks her to answer charges of theft by servant.
"We don't know what happened to her," says Alice Maranga, the head of Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida) Kenya's awareness programme.
"Her former employer had threatened her. Unknown people kept stalking her. Then she disappeared without trace; we don't know where she went or what happened to her."
Lucy (for legal reasons, we cannot use her real name without her consent), a Kenyan single mother of two, became hunted soon after she bolted from virtual slavery in Germany, where she had worked as a house-help.
An expatriate doctor in Kenya had employed her to look after her ageing parents back home in Germany, with promises of a huge salary and good working conditions.
However, the employer seized her passport as she arrived in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, even before she got to her destination.
Inhuman treatment
In Germany, Lucy was "confined and subjected to inhuman treatment by being overworked and underfed" until she got sick, according to Fida's annual report for 2005.
"The neighbours secretly provided her with food," Ms Maranga says.
One day, Lucy got sick and the medication by her employer, a doctor, worsened her situation.
When she complained, the employer threatened to make life difficult for her. With the help from her German neighbours, she escaped and contacted Fida and a German-based NGO, who helped her return home.
Her former German employer immediately "filed a theft case against (her) and swore an affidavit in Kenya". The expatriate sought to recoup all the money she spent on Lucy, including wages and the air fare.
Suddenly, Lucy turned from being a victim of slavery to a target of the Kenya police. And this was hardly surprising.
The Kenyan law recognises "theft by servant" and hardly human trafficking, a crime that could attract life imprisonment if a draft Bill forwarded to the Attorney-General last month becomes law.
To worsen the misery, people hired by her former employer started to stalk her, says Ms Maranga.
Not catered for
Lucy disappeared, never to be seen again. And nobody, not even her next of kin, know her whereabouts.
"Fida Kenya is still pursuing the case," according to the agency's annual report. The police have not given up on her either.
"Her employer made a complaint to us, that is all we know," says a source at Vigilance House, the police headquarters in Nairobi.
"I may not recall the case very well, but what I know is that human trafficking is not catered for in our laws. It is a sad affair.
"We don't know whether her former employer had something to do with her disappearance."
In a country oblivious of modern-day slavery (Kenya is yet to enact laws to fight trade in human beings), Lucy's story may sound bizarre to the average Kenyan.
Yet 17,500 people in the country find themselves in a similar predicament each year -- according to Randy Fleitman, a former Labour attaché at the US embassy in Kenya.
Another 30,000, mostly girls, live in virtual slavery within the country, working as house-helps or prostitutes at tourism facilities.
According to Margaret Mugwanja, the secretary-general of Kenya Association of Public Employment Agencies (Kapea), about 2,300 Kenyans are recruited yearly to work in foreign lands.
Considering those recruited directly, without going through agencies, seven out of eight people who leave Kenya, may be victims of international cartels operating in Nairobi and other towns, turning unsuspecting job-seekers into virtual slaves.
Relevant Links
"Given that trafficking as a concept in Kenya is largely unknown, is more subtle and is often perceived as a moral and not criminal issue, victims are transported publicly and at times in private vehicles.
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