Licensed labour externalisation companies are counting losses in Uganda following a directive by the line ministry to capture details of migrant workers through the new online system- External Employment Management Information System (EEMIS).
The labour companies which had fully processed the required legal documents for their workers to travel have since been ordered to start the process afresh without considering that these firms had invested hugely in acquiring visas, passports, covid cards/ certificates and travel tickets for their workers.
“Some of the visas have since expired as we wait to be incorporated into the Ministry’s new system,” said a manager of labour company that is grappling with the challenge.
All administrators of labour companies interviewed by this website wished to remain unnamed for fearing of being identified as “fighting” the ministry.
“We may end up losing licenses because we are exposing the misdeeds of the Ministry,” he said.
A separate source said, that the affected firms were engaging their umbrella- Uganda Association of External Recruitment Agencies (UAERA) to take legal action against the Ministry.
With the introduction of the External Employment Management Information System (EEMIS), Ministry of Gender scrapped the conventional method of capturing details of labour firms.
“We are not against the new E- system. In fact it’s the best method. But what we are saying is that, Gender Ministry should have allowed the two mechanisms to co-exist until companies fully integrate into the online system and when all their job orders are disposed off,” another manager said.
The labour firms are denouncing an ‘iron hand’ by the Ministry particularly in the labour externalization department.
The managers of the firms cited various examples of government entities that have introduced an online system but also allowed the conventional method of entering data to stay for a certain period of time.
The perfect example is the Immigration which allowed to use two methods; electronic passports registration and manual.
“Why wouldn’t Gender Ministry do that?” Is it hard to?” they queried.
No official from the Ministry was willing to comment when reached.
But previous the Permanent Secretary Aggrey David Kibenge in a public notice announced the resumption of processing new external labour recruitment licenses as directed by the cabinet.
“In view of the above, and the fact that upgrade of Ministry’s External Employment Management Information System (EEMIS) is ongoing and almost complete, the Ministry would like to inform all concerned that processing of new recruitment licenses will resume on 1st February 2022,” Kibenge said.