Cheated of Good Job, Kenyan Warns Migrant Workers

In Mombasa, Kenya, a labor broker offered Frank Wetindi a job in Dubai as a driver. Wetindi went into debt to pay the broker, but was given a job unloading planes in brutal heat, for a salary far less than he was promised. 

Living with eight men crammed in one room, Wetinidi says the experience overall “was not good.” When he became sick and went to the hospital, the employer deducted the cost from his salary, leaving him with nothing in his account. He says he was denied “freedom of workshop, freedom of movement and freedom of communication.”

Labor agencies “lie to [migrant workers about] the job they are going to do, the good salaries and all that. On arrival, you find something else,” he says.

Today, International Migrants Day, is a time to recognize that millions of migrant workers are trapped in conditions of forced labor and human trafficking. Some 150 million are migrant workers are among the 244 million migrants around the world, and like Wetindi, many have been lied to about the wages and working conditions they were promised by labor brokers.

The Solidarity Center and its partners around the world to create community and workplace-based safe migration and counter-trafficking strategies that emphasize prevention, protection and the rule of law. Most recently, the Solidarity Center and our partners in the Americas crafted a worker rights agenda for inclusion in the United Nations Global Compact on Safe, Regular and Orderly Migration.