The Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Thomas Tayebwa, has asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to explain the fate of Ugandans who are held captives in Egypt and Myanmar.
This follows reports that at least 450 Ugandans are being held hostage by the different ethnic armed groups fighting Myanmar’s armed forces. Insurgencies have been ongoing in Myanmar since 1948, the year the country, then known as Burma, gained independence from the United Kingdom.
According to Muwada Nkunyingi, the Kyadondo East Member of Parliament who doubles as the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, he has received correspondences purporting that several Ugandans have been held hostage in the Southeast Asian nation.
Equally, Nkunyingi revealed that dozens of Ugandans are languishing in different prison facilities in Egypt after they were rounded up by police in an illegal migrants’ crackdown in December 2023. The affected Ugandans are reportedly being charged US$500,000, about 1.909 billion shillings in fines.
Nkunyingi has implored the Government to update the country about the fate of Ugandans being detained in different countries, especially in the Middle East, the preferred destination of the majority of Ugandan migrant workers.
Early this month, the body of a 30-year-old Uganda student, Ahmed Mukasa Nsanja from Luwero District who had been studying at Al Azhar University under an Egyptian Government scholarship was repatriated after reportedly being beaten to death by fellow inmates.
The Deputy Speaker described the matter as “urgent and critical” and directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headed by Gen Jeje Abubakher Odongo and his deputy Henry Okello Oryem to present a report on the floor of the August House on Tuesday 6, 2024.
Due to unemployment back home, over 220,000 Ugandans left the country between 2016 and mid-2022, for work in the Middle East. 85 percent were domestic workers, with women taking up the larger share of 75 percent. Those figures do not include workers who left the country illegally in search of job opportunities.
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