State vows to protect Kenyan seafarers from exploitation

The Star Kenya

The government has expressed its commitment to supporting and protecting Kenyan seafarers from exploitation by what it has termed as unscrupulous employers. https://shorturl.at/M45pT

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00:00wouldn't trust his money with his relatives, or even try to invest back home.

00:06But in many instances, when they come back, the investment is not there.

00:12And they end up being disillusioned, some go into depression.

00:16And so to avoid all that, HFC has come up with products

00:21that are going to encourage our seafarers to save

00:26and invest whatever money they will be making

00:30during their tour of duty with different companies.

00:35And as government we support this because we want to encourage the savings culture

00:41and we also want to encourage Kenyans who particularly work overseas to invest back home.

00:47And so seafarers being in that category, we believe,

00:52will be able to benefit directly from the engagement with HFC.

00:55Get recruited by either unregistered agents or scrupulous agencies.

01:01We had a case in Kenyans who got abandoned, seafarers who got abandoned in Oman.

01:06We successfully got them back home.

01:10Worked very closely with the Minister of Foreign and International Affairs

01:14together with our embassy in Oman.

01:17And you know that vessel was a foreign vessel.

01:23And it got abandoned there.

01:25Those seafarers haven't been paid to date.

01:27We are pursuing their claims with the ship owner.

01:32And we are hoping that they will be settled in due course.

01:35We have also had cases of seafarers who got stranded in Madagascar recently

01:43and also in Egypt.

01:45And working very closely with the Seafarers Union

01:48and the leaders of this particular sector,

01:51we have ensured that those seafarers are back home.

01:55In the process of doing a census, and we will be streamlining that,

02:00one of the important documents that will help us in getting the actual numbers

02:05is what is called an SID, a Seafarers Identification Document,

02:09which has never been produced.

02:11We as governments, especially the steady partnership in American affairs,

02:18working with KMA and the State Department for Immigration and Citizen Services,

02:24have been given a directive by the President to ensure that we get to produce SIDs

02:31as soon as it is possible,

02:34so that our seafarers can be properly identified wherever they are.

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