Ethiopia: Governing By Crisis - A Labor Migration Gone Terribly Wrong

analysis
The abuse of Ethiopian migrant workers in Saudi Arabia is not an overnight happening; it took decades and involved Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and the world at large. To contain it Ethiopia is now in a state of governing by crisis Tesfaye Ejigu
Over the past two decades, the face of migration in and from Ethiopia has been changing from small numbers of political refugee flows in the '70s, '80s and early '90s to a gradual mass form of labor migration as Ethiopians started to enjoy traveling freely to seek employment opportunities abroad. Although Ethiopia is witnessing its own share of skilled labor drain, the larger picture of labor migration is now characterized by low skilled mass labor migration mostly to Middle Eastern countries notably Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Bahrain and Dubai.
The number of Ethiopian migrant workers showed a drastic increase after 2010, according to Mesele Assefa, private employment licensing team leader at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (MOLSA). In 2009, not more than 20,000 labor migrants got registered by the Ministry and only 160 employment agencies existed, most of them in Addis Ababa. In 2011 the number of registered migrant workers doubled to 41,000 while the number of employment agencies reached 262.
Regional cityAdmin. Sex male female total %
Tigray 921 8390 9311 5.10
Afar 84 558 642 0.35
Amhara 2715 55877 58592 32.07
Oromia 1790 67219 69009 37.77
Addis Ababa 1224 17667 18891 10.34
SNNP 478 24821 25299 13.85
Benishangul-Gumuz 23 362 385 0.21
Gambela 4 28 32 0.02
Dire Dawa 24 388 412 0.23
Harari 3 85 88 0.05
Somali 0 35 35 0.02
Total 7266 17,5430 182,696 100.00
Table 1 Number of Ethiopian migrant workers by regional states and sex as from July 8/2012-July7/2013. Source: MOLSA
When it comes to labor migration Ethiopians' is no different than the mobility of millions of migrant workers worldwide who are shuttling from countries to countries in search of better lives. Although there have been favorable political and economic conditions that helped minimize en mass labor migration over the past two decades, crippled economic policies that exacerbate unemployment, population pressure, poverty, rights abuses and staggering income disparity have pushed millions of Ethiopians to leave their countries by any means available.http://allafrica.com/stories/201312181042.html

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