Scrutinise job adverts for Gulf countries - media urged
A Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), the SEWA Foundation, has appealed to the media to conduct background checks on adverts on job openings in the Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, before placing or running them.
The foundation indicates that almost all workers who were recruited locally to go and work in those countries ended up being maltreated and forced to do menial jobs, sometimes without salary.
The President of the Foundation, Mr Jones Owusu Yeboah, in an interview with the Daily Graphic in Accra yesterday, also said a number of those recruited were currently languishing in prisons in those countries.
The foundation is championing the fight against the trafficking of Ghanaian youth to the Gulf countries, as well as human trafficking within.
Recruiting agencies
Mr Yeboah said the overseas job-recruiting agencies in the country usually couched the adverts they run on radio and the social media in a way to attract the unemployed youth to apply in the hope of being paid in dollars, only to realise on arrival at their destinations that the situation was not the case.
Mr Yeboah said the foundation had done its checks and realised that the activities of the so-called recruiting agencies were fraudulent because what they usually advertised was not what one got in the countries of destinations.
“It is against this backdrop that we call for the cessation of the adverts on job openings to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, as those who applied ultimately ended up as trafficked victims,” he said.
Mr Yeboah said human trafficking had assumed a different dimension and had become a silent killer of many youth who sought greener pastures outside the country.
He said there was now an opportunity to rescue some Ghanaian girls who were currently in prison in Kuwait, indicating that SEWA was in negotiations with a contact in Kuwaiti (name withheld), who had promised to help with the release of the girls on condition that they would be flown back home.
Outbreak of disease
Mr Yeboah said currently there was an outbreak of a strange disease in the prisons so the earlier the girls were helped to get out the better it would be for them.
“All we need now are air tickets to enable the girls to travel back home and we are appealing to the government, businesses, NGOs, organisations, institutions and all well-meaning Ghanaians to come to the aid of the girls,” he appealed.
According to him, two individuals, one in Kuwait and the other in Saudi Arabia, who made phone calls to the foundation, gave horrifying accounts about the treatment being meted out to them.
While some claimed that they had been forced into prostitution, others said they were made to do all kinds of menial jobs only to be thrown out of their jobs at the end of the month without being paid their salaries.
