13 Foreign Nationals Busted with Fake Kenyan Work Permits
The government has nabbed 13 foreigners with fake work permits during the ongoing registration and verification process of all foreign nationals working in the country.
Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i, who supervised the exercise at Nyayo House, Nairobi said appropriate action will be taken against them. The CS said some foreigners have low cadre jobs that should have been given to Kenyans.
“You are a site manager? We gave you a permit to be a site manager? Is it that we do not have site managers in this country,” he posed.
The exercise, which was launched on Monday aims at digitizing the work permit database for foreigners working in Kenya. The Interior ministry said its records indicated that there are only 34,000 legal foreign workers, a figure that is way below the actual number of foreign citizens working in the country.
“ If we have nabbed thirteen people by the third day there are indeed people with illegal work permits in this country,” the CS said.
In April, Matiang'i issued a 60-day ultimatum for all illegal foreign workers in the country to seek proper documentation or leave Kenya. He noted that many Kenyans remained unemployed while some foreigners were employed in positions jobs that can be occupied by Kenyans.
“Give me one reason why we need to give a permit to someone coming to be an accountant in Kenya or in the case of civil society, why give a permit to a programme officer with the number of graduates who have masters degrees,” Dr. Matiang’i added.
Comments (6)
If all you have is thirteen illegal work permits then your officers have a long way to go. With the corruption in Kenya you be announcing over 400 hundreds illegal work permits for the first three days. Do your work diligently.
@ Godhavemercy USA has over 20 million illegal immigrants workers compared to our country which has 13 thou as Matiang’i said wako wengi thou u cannot compare USA populations with Kenya but the fact remain they r all known as illegal workers in every country.Matiangi check all the foreign embassy land,United nations offices,evil societies company’s n trust me wako wengi.Especially the ones with permits which jobs Kenyans can do.
If every CS was doing the little bit that Matiang'i is doing in every docket that the CEO of the country places him in, Kenya would go very far.....
Look at Rwanda, a post-genocidal nation apparently moving so fast in the right direction due to consistency in doing the right things..
True @mtenja Rwanda is doing very well but kenya iko mbali sana bro.Kenya is 1m times ahead of Rwanda.I visited Kigali there is order n it’s very clean but bado ukabila ya the two tribes iko kwa wengi Hopefully it will never come out again genocide way.
This is very good news for us Kenyans. Deport all foreigners who are doing jobs that can be done by us Kenyans. Also, a very strict and tough warning should be given to the employers to stop employing foreigners for jobs which we Kenyans can do. But there is also another problem. What about those foreigners who have bribed heavily and acquired Kenyan Citizenship? Because once a person becomes a Kenyan Citizen, he or she becomes free and doesn't need to worry about getting a work permit. These foreigners are very much aware of that. I suggest that the government should investigate all the foreigners who have acquired Kenyan Citizenship within the past 20 years. On how and what grounds they acquired the Kenyan Citizenship.
what about those who have entered the country with tourist visas and have been operating businesses from their homes. And what about those who again come and stay in the country with tourist visas and actually run businesses (i mean they actually have shops). All they do is get tourist visas, operate businesses, go back to their country when the tourist visa expires and again come back with fresh tourist visas. I request the immigration department to look in to this matter as well. Track from your records, who has been coming in to the country and going out of the country frequently via tourist visa and stop issuing them with the same.