CS Mutua announces county based overseas job recruitment exercise

By Peter Ochieng

Cabinet Secretary for Labour and Social Protection Alfred Mutua has announced an extensive county-based recruitment exercise for overseas jobs.

Addressing the press in Kisumu on Friday afternoon, the former Machakos governor said the exercise will start on Wednesday next week in Machakos, before concluding towards the end of February, 2025 in Mombasa County.

Mutua said during the recent recruitment exercise for the Qatar jobs held in Nairobi, Kenyans travelled from various parts of the country, a move that informed their decision to have the exercises staged in all the 47 counties.

“Nairobi is in Kenya but Nairobi is not Kenya. Kenya is bigger than just Nairobi and it is unfair to have people travelling kilometres and paying so much money and sleeping on the road; sleeping on the site, just to seek for an opportunity,” said Mutua.

“Instead of them coming to Nairobi, we are taking the jobs to them. We are taking the jobs to all the 47 Counties of this Republic.”

During the round one Qatar jobs recruitment exercise, Mutua said, they recruited 3,247 Kenyans out of the 8,000 jobs on offer.

“Out of those recruited, 1,500 have received their offer letters and signed them, and have started processing documents so as to depart,” he added.

They are expected to travel within the next few weeks. According to the CS, the government has received numerous job offers from various companies in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Australia, German, UAE, Austria and Czech Republic among others, hence the need to conduct recruitments across the country.

Officers from the Ministry of Labour will conduct the recruitment, alongside officials from the National Employment Authority (NEA), National Industrial Training Authority (NITA), and licensed recruitment agencies, with the jobs being given out as per the quota system.

“We are doing a quota system. Of all the available positions, we are going to subdivide them among the 47 counties so that we share the cake across the country,” CS Mutua added.

The CS was accompanied by Runyenjes Member of Parliament Eric Karemba Muchangi, who doubles up as the chairman, National Assembly’s departmental committee on Labour. “We applaud the ministry for the idea of going to counties,” he said.

Mutua stated that his target is to fly out 1 million Kenyans for overseas jobs every year.