Move to regulate recruitment of househelps
An inter-ministerial committee to review regulations on the recruitment of Ghanaians into the gulf countries to work in low wage employment has signed an agreement with the Saudi Arabian government to protect young Ghanaian women working as domestic staff in gulf countries from abuse and exploitation.
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The agreement was developed to address lapses identified in the present arrangements where illegal recruitment agencies give false information to frustrated job seekers who seek to use such opportunities as a way out of poverty.
The committee – which has the Ministers of Foreign Affairs; Employment and Labour Relations; Children, Gender and Social Protection; and the Interior, the Ghana Immigration Service, the Ghana Police Service and officials of the Labour Department as technical people – will review existing policies on sending Ghanaians abroad to work.
“We must have a better framework than what presently exists, as a careful look at it would tell one that it is a service export we are doing and that needs to be structured and regulated appropriately,” Foreign Minister, Hanna Tetteh, told members of the ECOWAS Community Development Programme (ECOWAS CDP) Media Network in an interaction in Accra.
According to her, young women recruited into low wage employment in many gulf countries have been identified to have suffered abuse at the hands of their employers, following the lack of protection for domestic workers living and working in private homes in many gulf countries, leaving many vulnerable to abuse.
There have been widespread report of domestic workers recruited from third world countries being subjected to extreme abuse by their masters in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other gulf countries.
The abuse and exploitation are said to be partly facilitated by government systems that give employers an inordinate amount of control over their domestic workers.
According to Ms Tetteh, Ghana’s High Commission in Saudi Arabia’s capital city, Riyadh, which has concurrent accreditation to other gulf countries where Ghana has no existing permanent missions, has identified several cases where young girls recruited as househelps have been severely abused leaving many traumatised.
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“The number of incidents are quite unfortunate so we have developed mechanisms to be able to deal with the issues of abuse and exploitation,” Ms Tetteh hinted.
Agreement
Ms Tetteh indicated that a delegation from the Employment Ministry in Jordan visited the country to hold deliberations with the Ghanaian government about the issue.
“The Employment Ministry during the deliberations signed an agreement with its Jordanian counterpart to provide a structured framework for the recruitment of persons to go and work in those countries,” she said.