TZ deploys 8,400 youths for overseas jobs

DODOMA: TANZANIA has successfully facilitated the employment of a total of 8,402 young people abroad during the early period of the second phase of President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s administration.

The figure was disclosed by the Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (Labour, Employment and Relations), Mr Deus Sangu, in Dodoma recently when Tanzania officially assumed the chairmanship of the Regional Technical Advisory Committee on Labour Mobility for East and Horn of Africa countries from Uganda.

The committee is tasked with strengthening regional cooperation in managing safe, orderly and regular labour migration.

Mr Sangu said that before leaving the country, Tanzanian workers undergo pre-departure orientation training to ensure they understand their rights and responsibilities.

He added that their employment contracts were also reviewed to establish whether they adequately protect their rights.

“We have already started this journey as Tanzania, and we have told our colleagues that we are leading by example,” he said in the capital.

Elaborating, Mr Sangu said Tanzania had established a system that it wanted all member states of the Regional Ministerial Forum on Migration (RMFM) in East and the Horn of Africa to replicate.

He said the objective was to ensure that countries in the region adopted a common approach and spoke with one voice in protecting the rights and interests of their citizens working abroad.

“This is a major and demanding responsibility, which also involves engaging with destination countries.

We are particularly focusing on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, where many of our young people from this region are employed,” he said.

Mr Sangu said Tanzania and other countries in the region were holding discussions to review existing bilateral labour agreements and identify challenges within them.

The aim, he said, was to negotiate agreements that would offer greater benefits and protection to workers from the East and the Horn of Africa.

He said Tanzania was committed to ensuring that its two-year tenure as chair of the committee produced tangible results.

“As Tanzania, we have promised our colleagues that, as a respected country under the strong leadership of President Dr Samia Suluhu Hassan, we will ensure that the responsibility entrusted to us as chair produces results,” Mr Sangu said.

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He said Tanzania wanted to demonstrate, at the end of its two-year chairmanship, that it could effectively protect the interests of young people by ensuring they secured better employment contracts and salaries commensurate with the work they performed abroad.

Mr Sangu said Tanzania had also developed strategies to protect its citizens working overseas, including encouraging them to use official government channels when seeking employment abroad.

He said he had personally visited countries with large numbers of Tanzanians working there to educate them on the importance of following official procedures so that they could receive timely assistance whenever they faced challenges.

“In the past, private employment agencies would directly recruit and send people abroad, only to abandon them later,” he said.

However, he said, the Government had reviewed its guidelines governing private employment agencies, with new requirements now being enforced under the Prime Minister’s Office ( Labour, Employment and Industrial Relations).