Nurses seek redress as Benghazi labour export deal flops

The disgruntled nurses say that they have been conned and tossed around by the company since last year when they were interviewed for employment opportunities in Benghazi-Libya.

The process followed an advert indicating that vacancies were available for Ugandan medical personnel in Libya.

The front page adverts run across print media in May 2017, calling for nearly 2,000 nurses, lab technicians, intensive care unit and emergency staff, among others who would be attached to Benghazi Medical Centre.

They were promised a starting salary of Shs 3.6 million for nurses and lab technicians and Shs 7 million for doctors. They would also get free visas and air tickets.

By that time, the average pay for a nurse was about Shs 400,000 a month, while some doctors were earning as little as Shs 700,000, according to 2014 figures numbers from the health ministry. The offer was therefore seen as an opportunity for Ugandan medic's to earn a tenfold salary increment.

Those who expressed interest were required to provide 20 passport size photos, 4 coloured passport copies, and a service fee of Shs 50,000.

They were asked to pay a non-refundable fee of Shs 250, 000 more than Shs 400,000 for express passports and an addition of Shs 1.2 million as counterpart funding for the process.

They also had to undergo a mandatory HIV test and yellow fever vaccination with a promise that they would depart for the new assignments in a space of two weeks.

But none of them has left Uganda. The nurses that are still in the country and struggling to make ends meet after allegedly selling off their property and acquiring loans to facilitate the process. Pauline Namata, a clinical officer says they now want the company to refund their money.

Paul Tumwesigye, a nurse from Rukungiri district says that the delay is hurting.

The nurses want the government to intervene and stop companies like Middle East Companies from swindling money from unsuspecting Ugandans.

"We spent a lot of money applying for those jobs and we are hurt that we are still here in Uganda waiting to go to Benghazi more than six months after interviews were carried out," Tumwesigye added.

According to the nurses, they wrote letters to the Office of the President, the Ministry of Gender and the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The nurses also say that their efforts to report the case to police at Muyenga Police Station has been futile since no police officer at the station was willing to listen to them or to open a file.

At the time that the advertisement calling for medical workers was run by Middle East Consultants, the minister of labour, Janat Mukwaya described the move as welcome and even asked qualified candidates to take up the opportunity.

But thereafter, reports indicated that the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development had declined to approve the deal on grounds that the security situation in Libya was wanting.

The ministry reportedly tasked Middle East consultants to first assess the security situation and the general working conditions in Benghazi before deploying Ugandan workers.

Indeed Martin Wandera, the commissioner for Labour in the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development said that the deployment was delayed because Benghazi was one of several destinations that the ministry has not yet cleared for labour export.

He said they are still studying the environment there.

"We know what is happening and we are encouraging everyone one affected to go and get their money refunded to them. If they do not get it, let them come to us with proof of payment and we shall help them."

Isaac Ssemakadde, an advocate attached to Center for Legal Aid said Middle East Consultants needs to answer for a series of laws that they broke in the recruitment exercise that they carried out.

"From a strictly legal perspective, there's no doubt that Mr Mugenyi and his company broke the law in the way the adverts were carried out."

Ssemakadde now wants the export company to pay back all placements fees that the applicants were charged, costs and expenses incurred during the interview process and pay each affected nurse $ 24,000 as expected income; pay Shs 30 million for each client as compensation for psychological damage and $ 359 million for legal fees.

In the past few years, foreign recruiters and employers from the Gulf have increasingly turned to Uganda for cheap labour. Thousands of Ugandans are already working as waitresses, domestic servants, and store clerks in Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

In 2015, the Ugandan health ministry halted a plan to send nearly 300 medics to Trinidad and Tobago, after the government was sued by The Institute of Public Policy and Research (IPPR), a Ugandan think tank, which argued that that the deal violated the constitutional right of Ugandans to have access to basic medical services.