By Ebi Kesiena
The Kenyan government has disclosed plans to entrench in law, a stakeholders’ forum on migration to give it the requisite powers to effectively coordinate migrants in the country.
The Principal Secretary for Immigration and Citizen Services Julius Bitok, said the envisaged legislation will also help secure funding for the National Coordination Mechanism on Migration (NCM).
Speaking during a stakeholders’ meeting on the management of migrants in the country, Bitok said the envisaged legal framework will be complemented by policies targeting the integration of skilled labour and other resources possessed by migrants into Kenya’s economic development ecosystem.
He said the absence of a legal foundation has handicapped the NCM’s primary role of coordinating migration among state agencies, the UN and development partners despite the forum being in existence for nearly six years.
“For the last six years, NCM has been hanging without a proper legal framework. We are going to create it within the law for it to be able to properly coordinate activities by state departments and across agencies and development partners.”
Citing examples across the world, the PS said Kenya stands to benefit from deliberate and structured management of the more than a million migrants in the country.
“Many countries have excelled because of how they manage migration. It is not just natural resources which make a country great. It is also about the kind of people that a country can attract and its migration management.”
He added that the envisaged migration policy will seek to harness the ‘unique talent, opportunities and resources’ among other assets possessed by migrants.
The NCM which brings together representatives from the ministries of Interior, Foreign Affairs, Labour, Tourism and Gender among others, the UN and other development partners was formed to pool resources and synergise migrant management.
It also aims at avoiding costly duplication and wastage of resources.
