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{
    "id": 1273161,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1273161/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 378,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ms. Florence Bore",
    "speaker_title": "The Cabinet Secretary for Labour and Social Protection",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you Member of Parliament for Kesses. I went to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in February and we were able to engage with the Minster for Labour and Social Development, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. That discussion is still ongoing. We have not finished the business; we are doing it step by step. In the course of this month, I am meeting a body of recruitment agencies in Saudi Arabia. That body is referred to as Coordination Council for Recruitment Companies (CCRC). Part of that arrangement is to ensure that we have our workers going there and working under safe conditions. The engagement is continuous. It is continuous because the Bilateral Labour Agreements (BLA) that was there was signed in 2021 and it was only for domestic workers. The current Bilateral Labour Agreements (BLAs) that we are reviewing and working on are to enable other skilled labour from Kenya to go there. This is because the job market there is very big. When I went there, I discovered that there are one million Philippines working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Here, we are only talking about 200,000. We should be able to fight for that market and be able to brand our Kenyan workers who are very good. We have the National Youth Service (NYS), youths that have been graduating and many unemployed Kenyans, up to five million, and most of them are aged between 15 and 30 years. What are we going to do with Kenyans looking for jobs? Let us look at the positive side and minimise the negatives that we are getting and ensure that we protect our workers. We are also going to benchmark with these other countries that have workers in this region. The Philippines are very many there. I am sure that with the new developments in that country, we can still get space for our Kenyan youth. There is a new city that is coming up that is called ‘Neom’. They need workers, security, people to work in the construction industry, drivers and many others. The job orders are many. The other day, one of the companies from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, gave us a job order of 10,000 Kenyan workers, which we should provide by looking at the skills that we have, and ensure that we do not deny our country certain skills that they need. Thank you, Hon. Deputy Speaker."
}