Al Warsan immigration center has been emptied of all stranded Ugandans, Eagle Online can reliably report.
According to a source at Uganda’s Embassy in Abu Dhabi, the center had 70 stranded Ugandans including 50 men and 20 women.
“All of them are at terminal 2 at Dubai airport ready to go home. There are about 45 of them without travel documents and our team is going there to supply them with emergency travel documents right now,” the source said.
Currently, there is a crisis in the labor externalization business in the UAE where several Ugandans are turning into conmen, sleeping on the streets and doing other inhumane activities. Since September, the UAE government has deported over 700 Ugandans who were detained at Al Aweer immigration center and 20 other centers.
The Ugandans had accumulated fines and expired visas. It is reported that most of the Ugandans accessed the UAE through visit visas with the hope of getting jobs during and after the six months Dubai Expo which ended in March 2022.
Last week, Minister of State for Labour, Employment, and Industrial Relations, Okello Charles Engola Macodwogo Engola blamed the huge number of stranded Ugandans on inadequate information about formal channels of getting employment abroad, many youths are lured by human traffickers. Traffickers through false representation, deploy workers into unknown destinations with hostile working conditions.
“Exploitation of Ugandan migrant workers by illegal Ugandan recruiters who are resident in host countries through false promises for better pay. They persuade workers to abscond or run away from their jobs,” he said.
The illegal recruiters place these workers into illegal shelters under poor hygienic conditions. In cases where the illegal recruiters succeed to find employment for the migrant workers, it is the former who get paid and not the latter.
He said there is a lack of an efficient and reliable rapid-response system for protecting migrant workers. Violation of the rights of especially domestic workers who sometimes are denied access to their travel documents, communication gadgets and even medical care.
Currently, there are about 100,000 Ugandans in UAE, 95% doing skilled work and 5% having challenges.
From migrant workers, the government annually collects US$1.2 billion (Shs 4.5 trillion) globally, the Middle East alone sends in $600 million (Shs 2.2 trillion) and $200 million (Shs 762 billion) from UAE.
