Kenya nurses worse off  in Lesotho

• 150 Kenyan nurses in Lesotho working under poor conditions.
• Health workers bound by their contracts scheduled to end in 2010.

Over 150 Kenyan health workers are stuck in Lesotho working under poor conditions, the Union of Kenya Civil Servants has said.

According to the Union, the workers are “mainly nurses working as nannies in rural Lesotho.”

Addressing a news conference Thursday, the Union’s Secretary General Tom Odege said it would be difficult to sort out the mess given that it was a government to government agreement.

“These people signed their contracts in Lesotho, had they done it here, it would have been easier,” Mr Odege said.

He said the Ministry of Health had handled the recruitment and handed over the recruits to the Lesotho government.

“This was a government to government recruitment, nobody sought our opinion on the issue... the contract was signed in Lesotho,” he said.

It is understood that the nurses petitioned the Government to intervene and rescue them from the “unbearable conditions” but the Government asked the union to find a way of having the nurses released.

As a result, Mr Odege revealed that a proposal was ready to have the Government register all the recruitment agencies involved in international employment, so as to pre-empt similar situations in future.

Fake recruitment agencies have been on the prowl conning unemployed Kenyans of millions of cash, by promising jobs abroad. 

Ms Truphena Murila, the National Coordinator of migrant workers group, said the nurses were bound by their contracts, which are scheduled to lapse in 2010.

“It would be unfair to expose our people just because they are looking for greener pastures... the conditions out there are not as rosy as they are portrayed by recruitment agencies,” Ms Murila said.

Similarly, the Public Services International, a global movement that handles migration of workers, said the situation of the nurses had deteriorated.

PSI’s regional secretary  Khadija Mohammed said the situation wouldn’t have arisen if the government had gone through the usual channels.