‘Labour migration recruiters creating artificial opportunities’

How can we improve human and labour rights for all workers in the world of work, including migrant workers, going forward?
When we talk about migrant workers, we seem to focus more on Africans who are going out. But other people are coming to Africa and to Nigeria.

How would you situate that in terms of the migration governance process?
First, I would say that could be one of our expectations from the media. Let us also help to make the public aware that there are people that are also coming from other continents to Africa, that are also migrant workers. Most of whom we call ‘expatriates’ most of the time. We call them expatriates. That makes it look as if they are not migrants, they are migrant workers. How do we also get that? And then, of course, some are equally migrants, but they are not seen in that light. For example, foreign security providers that come from Niger, Chad, and all that. We don’t see them in that light, but that is who they are. How do we treat them? Treating them also means you make the national laws and the provisions accessible to them in that regard. Also, we can shape the narrative of how we move within the continent because more Africans are moving within the continent than those going out. Migration, primarily, or when you want to start, is first proximity. Even before, for those who do not have big-time plans. Then for those who have big-time plans, they save and they can want to go far. But the easiest is proximity. If it is close to you, you can go there easily.

So, how do we protect people who are moving within our continent better? When we can contribute to shaping the narrative, we will help to disabuse the minds of the African public. For instance, this narrative of migrants taking jobs. If you do the analysis, you will find that when migrants move, they do not only move with their energies. They do not only move with their ideas but with their capitals. They even set up businesses. Research has shown that if you use Nigerian migrants, for instance, legitimate ones, as we know, they are those who move irregularly. But for those who have moved regularly, you find that some of them are employers in their countries of residence. They are employers of labour. Very importantly, migrants also contribute to cultural diffusion. And when you contribute to cultural diffusion, you increase tolerance. So, there’s a tendency for us to fight amongst ourselves, because by the time we intermarry between and amongst ourselves, those things go down. By the time I learn your language, I can relate to you.

How does Africa change the narrative – that other nationals also come here to work and that it is not only Africans that seek greener pastures in the Western countries?
When they talk about Africa moving out, it is relative in the context of survival, and the socioeconomic situation on our continent.
When it is juxtaposed with those coming from the West, the number is not as high or alarming as ours. Again, I talked about the nomenclatures that are used – expatriates and skilled workers. So, if you look at it in terms of volume, you might think that Westerners, those from the West are not coming to Africa. But when you look at it in terms of value addition to the individual and their economy, you need to then be able to situate the narrative better.

In the end, when you put the salary this person earned and the salary that he or she exports to his country of origin, you find that Africa is not on its own just throwing out its best in the hat. There are people also coming to Africa. But of course, let us also not only look at it from the fact that people are taking from us.

What are the people also bringing? They are also bringing knowledge, they are bringing expertise, they are bringing skills, which our continent also can benefit from. This is how the global human community should co-exist. We encourage it.

What are the challenges unions face in the promotion of labour migration within and outside of the continent?
The challenge is that governments that want to deal with the socio-economic crisis, look at labour migration as an opportunity for job creation. So, the focus is really on numbers.

How many jobs have we created? The focus is less on the rights of migrants. The focus is also on remittance, which is not bad. But in that process, they forget the hen that lays the eggs. Where will you get the eggs continuously when you go to the bank? So how do you protect the migrant workers? One of the challenges we face is the fact that labour migration protection is not strong. Another challenge we face is also that recruitment agencies and employers want to cash out. Therefore, labour migration is an industry that is ever booming. But what we have seen is that part of the challenge is that these recruitment agencies are creating artificial demands where nobody is demanding labour. They are creating the artificial demand. In so doing, they are now exploiting the migrants. To create artificial demand, they have to create a story of Eldorado of well-being and a perfect environment. Africans then believe that where they are headed is better than where they are coming from. This scenario leads to the challenge of slavery, which we see. There is now in existence trafficking in labour migration work. There is kidnapping in labour migration work. Because people give false narratives. So, all of these are some of the challenges we see. But in terms of why these challenges are there, I want to talk about the prospects, and what we see that are good. The prospect is that we are happy that the African Union has risen to the challenge very well in dealing with labour migration.

What is the role of African governments in all of this?
We are seeing quite a few of our governments are determined for us to deal with integration. To say, hey, Africa, we are one people. How do we integrate very well? And this is why we are saying to our leaders, deconstruct our borders. Let us make it open for our people to come in. We are seeing the prospect of more skills development, where we are saying if we train our people, then there is an opportunity that they will become useful. I do not have a problem with somebody who is skilled and wants to go and work abroad. It should be good and it should be an opportunity for the country. Let us train our people.
We see the possibility, the opportunity, the prospect there. And then there is also the prospect of collaborating in developing skills. In the global labour market, the dynamics are that Europe and

North America will be ageing. Africa will remain young. As a youthful continent, people will need our young men and women to go and they want to do it regularly. We also support that. How do we do it together? We see opportunities where more of our people, Africans come together and talk, and we can engage others from Europe and others to say legal pathways are the best ways. How do we improve legal pathways so that we do not encourage irregular and dangerous migration, desperate and dangerous migration?

How do you make visa regimes more bearable rather than strenuous, difficult, and expensive? Those are opportunities that we see going forward that we should encourage. More importantly, we see opportunities in a number of our governments to provide
social protection to our people so that we can defeat the desperation to leave when people do not have jobs. If there are social safety nets, in between looking for jobs, you can continue to survive. The level of desperation will reduce. But importantly, we want to work with our governments. This is our call. We are ready to say let us work together to create jobs for our people, decent jobs. Once our people have jobs here, those that are ready to go, or that also constitute maybe support, the labour, we are ready to export them in exchange for good wages, salaries for our people working abroad who themselves can also repatriate their earnings back home to boost our local economy.

Are trade unions collaborating with governments to properly interrogate migration bilateral agreements to prevent exploitation?
We are optimistic. The idea of a bilateral labour migration agreement is that an ideal one should be the one that should protect migrant workers. But what we have seen is that countries that demand our labour are usually the ones that design, develop, and hand over this agreement to us and ask our people just to sign the dotted line,which should not be so. We are happy that the African Union has developed a guide on bilateral labour migration agreements. The ILO has a guide on bilateral labour migration agreements. Both guides talk about collaborative engagement, tripartite engagement of government, employers through their recruitment agencies, and trade unions being part of the process.

In other words, if a government is signing a bilateral labour migration agreement, the Ministry of Labour or Ministry of Foreign Affairs or Internal Affairs, because in some countries different ministries are leading, depending on who is leading, how have you engaged the social partners? We want to see the engagement of social partners. When you engage us, we can help you with a better idea of some of the provisions that might be anti-workers that we need to improve upon. What we are saying to them is our position is not that of antagonism, where we say, no, if you do not do it like this, we say, no, how can we do it like this? Once you follow the guide, there will be no problem. Our role is more of monitoring. If we are even left out of the process, it is not a problem. But we are ready to monitor the developed and signed agreement, and more importantly, look at the implementation and call out the gaps. In calling out the gaps, this is where we need our media to speak as a whole to this issue.

There have been agitations by African workers’ unions against Saudi Arabia hosting the World Cup. Now that the hosting right has been awarded to the country, what is the next line of action by ITUC-Africa and its partners?
Yes, we have made demands. What do we want? We want a genuine, collaborative, inclusive labour law reform in Saudi Arabia that takes care of every man and woman working in Saudi Arabia. We want to see the government of Saudi Arabia take concrete action on our observations. The component of the Kafala system that confiscates passports and exit visas of workers has to be addressed. This idea that you cannot leave an employer, go and work with another without the permission of a sponsor, how do we deal with that? The question of access to justice, remedies when there are infractions, where is access to justice? How do we deal with that? Regarding the issue of women who work in homes, when they do excessive jobs, what are the discussions going forward? But more importantly, when these persons are leaving their countries of origin to countries of destination, where are the pre-departure arrangements for them? What are the roles of countries of destination in these processes? As organised labour, this is where we find, and we see ourselves in helping to make this work.

Together with our counterparts in Saudi Arabia, which we also working with, hoping that something like that will come up, how do we work together to ensure that whatever reform that is agreed to, is implemented and is sustained? These are our demands and we are hoping that the Saudi authorities will listen, because we are going to take cognisance of the fact that it will be hosting the World Cup, and like we have said, besides the World Cup, Saudi Arabia has a very ambitious modernisation agenda. We think in the next two decades, Saudi Arabia might just be a construction site, and so they will need different kinds of migrant workers to complement that ambition. We know that they will be coming to Africa to look for this workforce.

How do we protect our people? Don’t forget, when we talk about Saudi Arabia, we must not be looking at them alone. We must look at our government. We are also targeting the African government in terms of what they are doing in readiness for all of these.