Undated file image of Ministry of Labour Cabinet Secretary Simon Chelugui at a previous event. KENYANEWS.GO.KE
The Ministry of Labour has unveiled new measures to regulate agencies offering Kenyans jobs abroad.
With the living conditions of Kenyans in the diaspora worsening every day, the government pinned the blame on recruiting agencies it claimed have been operating without checks and balances.
According to Labour CS Simon Chelugui, a committee was formed and tasked with vetting the recruitment agencies and their staff to ascertain their expertise and legality.
Agencies will be subjected to scrutiny every year before their licenses and that of their staff are renewed.
National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani (Right) and Labour Cabinet Secretary Simon Chelugui (Left), at NSSF building in Nairobi on January 16, 2020. FILE
"These new measures will ensure any Kenyan willing to travel and work abroad is protected," Chelugui announced.
Kenya also recently introduced a wage protection program and a distress alert line - 0800222223 - that will allow Kenyans in the Gulf state to seek help.
Saudi Arabia further formed a protection and support department under the Ministry of Human Resources tasked with handling complaints from migrant workers, recruitment agencies and embassies.
To assure foreigners that it had looked into their grievances, it also allowed employees to change employers and cancel or extend contracts.
"In addition, the employment agencies will have to induct Kenyans through the new measures before they sign a contract," Kenya's Ministry of Labour announced the changes.
However, despite the developments, Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary (PS) Ambassador Kamau Macharia claimed that some Kenyans force their employers to act wildly and thus ought to be blamed for the misfortunes.
"There are some places the kind of submissiveness required from domestic workers is not innate in Kenyan job seekers.
"Sometimes our people will not be so subservient and are very ancient when they secure jobs in countries like Saudi Arabia," Macharia claimed.
Saudi Arabia Capital City, Riyadh. ALJAZEERA, By By OSCAR NALYANYA , Kenyans..co.ke
Presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Emmanuel Macron of France and Félix Tshisekedi of DR Congo met in New York on the sidelines of the UNGA on September 21, 2022. PHOTO | COURTESY | URUGWIRO
Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo agree that M23 and other armed militia are a major security threat and are hurting bilateral ties. However, the two countries are prescribing different solutions to the problem.
This week in New York, presidents Felix Tshisekedi of DR Congo and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame met under mediation of French President Emmanuel Macron. They agreed to resume talks on how to tackle the M23 threat.
“The two presidents agreed to act together to obtain, as soon as possible, the withdrawal of the M23 from all occupied regions and the return of displaced people to their homes, with the support of the United Nations and their partners in the African Union, the East African Community and the Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR),” the DR Congo presidency said in a statement.
The dispatch said President Kagame and President Tshisekedi “have also agreed to intensify their co-operation in the long term to fight against impunity and put an end to the action of armed groups in the Great Lakes region, including the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). These efforts will take place within the framework of existing regional peace initiatives, including the Nairobi process.”
Kigali did not release the “joint statement” but indicates that the leaders had discussed solutions to the conflict in the DR Congo’s eastern region.
The New York meeting, however, was preceded by harsh words for Rwanda by President Tshisekedi in a speech on Tuesday at the UN General Assembly.
He said that Rwanda was undermining peace efforts in the DRC.
“Despite my goodwill for the search of peace, some neighbours have found no better way to thank us than to aggress and support armed groups that are ravaging eastern Congo,” he said.
President Tshisekedi added: “In defiance of international law, [Rwanda] has once again not only interfered in the DR Congo since March by direct incursions of its armed forces, but also occupies localities in North Kivu province by an armed terrorist group, the M23, to which it provides massive support in terms of equipment and troops.”
President Kagame hit back a day later, noting that the insecurity situation in eastern DRC had exposed Rwanda to “cross border attacks that are entirely preventable”.
“The blame game does not solve the problems,” he said in his speech to the UN General Assembly.
“There is an urgent need to find the political will to finally address the root cause of instability in eastern DR Congo. These challenges are not insurmountable and solutions can be found. This would ultimately be much less costly in terms of both money and human lives,” President Kagame added.
Tensions have persisted, with officials from both governments telling The EastAfrican that no progress has been registered since the height of hostilities earlier this year.
“There is no improvement in relations at all. DR Congo has insisted on Rwanda as its scapegoat for the insecurity in the east, even when they have so many rebel groups operating there,” a Rwandan official said on condition of anonymity.
Kinshasa sees Rwanda as a state aggressor, particularly with the capture of Bunagana town by the M23 rebels. Rwanda sees the DRC as a supporter of former genocide masterminds FDLR group, which is hiding in DR Congo.
“Bunagana has to be free for RwandAir to be allowed to resume flights to DR Congo. This is DR Congo saying, ‘M23 is Rwanda’,” a DRC official told The EastAfrican.
Takeover
Since June, M23 rebels have controlled Bunagana town in the North Kivu province that borders Uganda.
The advance of M23 culminated in the suspension of RwandAir flights to the DRC, as well as the shelling of rockets into Rwandan territory by the Congolese army.
This week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told France 24, that the only way to achieve peace is through “serious” discussions between the DR Congo, Uganda and Rwanda.
“We need to have a joint perspective to avoid this situation that always takes us backwards when we make progress.
“These countries need to understand each other. These countries must co-operate effectively for the security of the Congo and also to guarantee security in Rwanda and Uganda.”
The DRC and Rwanda had opened dialogue under a Joint Commission. But the two countries have only had one meeting, in late July. Previously, the Joint Commission had not met for 10 years.
After the resurgence of the M23 rebels, this year the DRC accused Rwanda of supporting the Congolese rebels militarily and in the supply of arms. By The EastAfrican
A member of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) has been confirmed dead after a vehicle they were traveling in was involved in an accident along the Nairobi-Nakuru Highway.
Nakuru County Police Commander Peter Mwanzo said that the vehicle was heading to Nairobi from North Rift.
"A truck ferrying members of the KDF from Eldoret to Embakasi, Nairobi has been involved in an accident. Unfortunately, we lost one while receiving treatment at the Rift Valley General Hospital,” said Mwanzo.
The police boss said that the cause of the accident was not immediately established.
"It happened just below the Njoro interchange along the Nakuru-Eldoret Highway. The driver of the truck lost control and veered off the road," said Mwanzo.
He explained that several others were rushed to PGH with serious injuries.
"Ten members of KDF were first attended to at the Nakuru hospital. Majority have already been airlifted to Nairobi for further treatment," said Mwanzo. - Kennedy Gachuhi, The Standard
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Prince Harry faces a life of permanent “exile,” with King Charles plotting to follow the playbook drawn up by the royals as they overcame the crisis triggered by Edward VIII, the king who abdicated in 1936 and was obliged to live the rest of his life outside the U.K., The Daily Beast understands.
A friend of the king’s told The Daily Beast: “The royals handled the abdication crisis by exiling Edward which meant he and Wallis ultimately came to seem like unimportant, misguided, disloyal, and even treacherous individuals to almost the entirety of the British people. It was a masterful operation in the service of which the Queen Mother, in particular, worked tirelessly.
“The same thing is already happening with Harry and Meghan, and will only gather pace over the next few years under the rule of King Charles. And of course a wayward second son is far less of an existential threat to the fabric of the monarchy than a wayward king.”
Another source, a former Buckingham Palace staffer, told The Daily Beast that King Charles’ accession statement, in which he encouraged his son and Meghan to “continue to build their lives overseas” was an undisguised message to them to not disrupt his reign by making frequent trips to the U.K.
“Harry and Meghan will get an invite to the coronation but they will be firmly seated in the cheap seats along with Beatrice and Eugenie, as they were at the funeral. That will be it. Charles will be ruthless when it comes to protecting the Crown, and that means keeping Harry and Meghan as far from the center of gravity as possible,” the former staffer told The Daily Beast.
The news follows the revelation, reported by the Sun Thursday night, that Harry snubbed Charles’ offer of dinner the night he was at Balmoral following Queen Elizabeth’s death, after Charles had forbidden Meghan from joining Harry at Balmoral.
Instead of joining Charles, Camilla, and William for supper at Charles’ home on the Balmoral estate, Birkhall, Harry stayed with Prince Andrew, Prince Edward and wife Sophie at Balmoral Castle itself.
A source said: “Harry was so busy trying to get Meghan to Balmoral and rowing with his family that he missed the flight. Charles has an open invitation for Harry to dine with him whenever he is in the country. But Harry was so furious that he refused to eat with his father and brother. It was a massive snub. And he got out of Balmoral at the earliest opportunity to catch the first commercial flight back to London.”
Although it was the couple themselves who made the decision to go and live in America, they have eyed a transcontinental role for themselves. As they said, in their first departure announcement, “We now plan to balance our time between the United Kingdom and North America.”
They were equally open about their desire to continue to “represent” the monarchy while being able to earn their own money.
This plan was rebuffed by the queen at the so-called Sandringham Summit, where the couple were told they could have no role in public life as part-time royals.
A palace statement at the time said that the queen had told the couple “that in stepping away from the work of the Royal Family it is not possible to continue with the responsibilities and duties that come with a life of public service.”
In response, Harry and Meghan basically said, “Oh yes we can,” issuing a statement that read: “We can all live a life of service. Service is universal.”
While the queen did not order them to live overseas, as far as is known, the shutdown of travel caused by the pandemic, which struck the world just weeks after they quit the royal family, and the birth of baby Lilibet, essentially parked the question of them traveling back and forth to the U.K. for two years.
King Charles to bring Prince Harry-Meghan Markle back to royal fold?
Little surprise that Vanity Fair’s Katie Nicholl, in her new book The New Royals, says that William and Kate felt “relief” when Harry and Meghan announced their decision to move to the U.S., because they felt that the “drama was gone.”
However the idea, widely assumed, that they have given up the idea of having a significant role in British public life is not accurate. Indeed, Harry has made it explicitly clear in a legal action he is bringing against the British government, seeking automatic police protection when in the U.K., that he still sees the U.K. as his home and wants to operate here.
In a submission made in January this year, Harry’s legal team said: “The U.K. will always be Prince Harry’s home and a country he wants his wife and children to be safe in. With the lack of police protection, comes too great a personal risk.”
At a February court hearing, Harry’s barrister said: “It goes without saying that he does want to come back to see family and friends and to continue to support the charities that are so close to his heart.”
The idea of Harry popping back over every few weeks to do public appearances is likely to give Charles the chills.
So while the decision about Harry’s security is, strictly speaking, a matter for the courts, it is probably safe to rule out the establishment pulling any strings to get Harry what he wants.
Charles’ advisers will be mindful of the fact that when Harry and Meghan dropped into the U.K. at the beginning of this month, having announced what was supposed to be a four-day whirlwind trip supporting charities “close to their hearts” (that phrase again) it completely dominated royal newsfeeds for days on end.
That trip became the subject of intense irritation at the palace, with insiders annoyed at the couple undertaking engagements that looked indistinguishable from their former royal duties.
Then, of course, the queen died, meaning that the four-day excursion became a two-week-plus epic—the couple finally flew home to their children on Tuesday, Sept. 20, Page Six reported, having arrived, it is thought, on Sunday, Sept. 4.
One reasonable interpretation of Harry’s treatment in the days after the queen’s death and at her funeral is that it was part of a strategy of chipping away at Harry’s importance, of reframing him in the public eye from being, “Prince Harry, sixth in line to the throne” to “Prince Harry, minor, non-working royal who lives overseas.”
If Harry and Meghan had sought to blur the lines, via charitable commitments, between their present identity as private citizens and their former identity as royals, the last two weeks offered the palace an unprecedented opportunity to render them again in sharp relief.
The most explicit illustration of this was in the seating arrangements at the queen’s funeral which, humiliatingly, denied Harry a front-row seat in favor of his cousins Peter and Zara Philips. Palace sources have insisted that the seating was decided purely in order of age and that there was “no snub” involved.
Harry’s expression and his reluctance to sing “God Save the King” suggested that he saw things otherwise, understanding all too well that for the second son of the king to be second-rowed in favor of his cousins on the basis of his age was, if not a snub, certainly a massive recalibration of the royal pecking order, which traditionally has accorded privilege on the order of precedence.
This was just one final reminder of Harry’s new lowly, outsider status. The tone was set on the day of the queen’s death when no seat was found for Harry on the military jet that conveyed William, Andrew, and Edward to the queen’s deathbed in Scotland, with Harry instead being forced to take a privately chartered prop plane from a civilian airport, Luton, over an hour from London, and being told of his grandmother’s death just five minutes before the world at large was informed.
After either not being invited to dine with Charles, or—as the Sun reports—refusing, Harry left Balmoral early to fly home on a scheduled BA service. He was subsequently ordered not to wear uniform for any of the ceremonial events before Charles highlighted the fact that it was completely in his gift to allow him to wear uniform, had he been so minded, by ordering Harry to wear uniform during his vigil for the queen.
Prior to the queen’s death, tempers had been stirred by Meghan’s inflammatory interview with The Cut in which she implicitly threatened to release more secrets about her time in the royal family.
However, there is a perception in the palace that Meghan’s attacks on the monarchy can be shrugged off and that they are failing to cut through. The all-important British audience appears to have largely decided she is not credible, principally due to the fact that she has made some bizarre claims in interviews, such as her inexplicable comment comparing her wedding to the freeing of Nelson Mandela, which the British media have then jumped on, and made a huge show of forensically pulling apart.
Harry represents an entirely different level of threat. There is genuine nervousness about the impact his memoir—now thought to be delayed in the wake of the queen’s death, but that has not been confirmed—could have on the king if he decides to launch a serious attack on Charles, which many insiders fear he will.
One explanation for the relentless messaging over the past two weeks that Harry is now firmly outside the royal club, and so are his offspring, could be that it is to undermine Harry’s status as the ultimate insider before the book comes out.
Prince Charles’ office declined to comment on the claims made in this piece when contacted by The Daily Beast.
While there is no reason to doubt, on a personal level, the unofficial line from the palace that Charles loves Harry and wishes nothing more than to be reconciled with his son, the personal will now come a distant second to Charles’ top priority; preserving the Crown.
Harry and Meghan are a huge distraction that the royals don’t need. Charles wants them out of sight and out of mind. So he is likely to feel far more comfortable if Harry and Meghan are safely on the other side of the world—for ever and ever, amen. By Tom Sykes, The Daily Beast
A masked journalist is seen in London on April 7, 2020. As journalists face the challenges of covering COVID-19, CPJ and other organizations are working to assess the global impact. (AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Lusaka—Zimbabwean authorities should hold accountable the security agent who attacked journalist Ruvimbo Muchenje at a rally for opposition political party Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), and the CCC should ensure journalists are not unduly denied access to its public events or harassed for doing their job, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.
Around 2 p.m. on September 11, in Chinhoyi, a city about 72 miles (116 kilometers) northwest of the capital of Harare, a CCC security agent denied Muchenje, a reporter for privatey owned website NewsHawks, access to the Gadzema stadium to cover a rally held by party leader Nelson Chamisa, according to newsreports, statements by the Zimbabwe chapter of the regional press freedom group, Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), the International Federation of Journalists, and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.
Muchenje told CPJ that a security agent outside the stadium refused to allow her in despite her producing her press pass, which was supposed to grant access to the event. When Muchenje tried to move past and enter the stadium, the agent grabbed and pulled her hair, and threw her to the ground, she said. A second agent joined after Muchenje fell to the ground.
When a driver for another journalist sought to intervene, the agent who attacked her defended his actions, saying that Muchenje had been “disrespectful,” the journalist said, adding that CCC supporters watched but did not intervene during the attack.
The attack lasted several minutes before the agents allowed Muchenje to stand, but one held her by her belt, she said. She was released when Stanley Gama, a former editor of the Daily News who recognized Muchenje, intervened and persuaded the agents to let her go, Gama tweeted and told CPJ via messaging app.
“Zimbabwe’s authorities should transparently investigate and hold accountable the security personnel responsible for attacking journalist Ruvimbo Muchenje,” said Muthoki Mumo, CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, in Nairobi. “Journalists should not be unduly denied access to events of public interest and are too often harassed, attacked, or arrested simply for doing their job.”
Separately on the same day, Voice of America reporter Nunurai Jena was similarly denied entry to the stadium to cover the rally and harassed by coalition security personnel, according to mediareports.
Coalition spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere told CPJ over the phone that the incidents involving the journalists at the stadium were “unfortunate” and the party had apologized. Muchenje said she had received an apology via messaging app, but CPJ could not confirm whether Jena had received an apology. CPJ tried to reach Jena via messaging apps and phone calls but received no response.
Mahere also promised to ensure the safety of all journalists who cover the coalition’s rallies, Mahere and a Bulawayo24 report said.
Zimbabwe’s information minister, Monica Mutsvangwa, condemned the incidents in a statement, saying attacks on female journalists “border on gender-based violence,” according to newsreports and a copy of the statement posted on Twitter.
For years, there have been incidents of repeated harassment, arrest, and detention of journalists in Zimbabwe, including in March, when a member of Chamisa’s security detail attacked journalist Courage Dutiro for photographing a party member at a rally. By CPJ
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