By Aden Abdi Daher
Instead of moving forward we are moving backward by killing the moral values of our younger generations and yet we are not aware of it.
I will share here with you my dearest citizens how neglected you are due to the circumstances you inflicted to your selves by not knowing your rights and not fighting for it. Nothing will change until you start to speak louder and free yourself from being silent. When you look at the unemployment rate in our country you will only wish for a miracle and Somaliland to be recognised so that its people could benefit from it.
But when you look back at how far we’ve come and achieved a sense of pride illuminates our faces and handicap us at the same time, it handicapped us by always letting go of the things that really matters in our lives by always saying we didn’t use to have all this so let’s leave this because things will get fixed little by little with time. No! Nothing will get fixed until we fix it and the things that needs immediate actions is the labour act that destitute all the rights from its citizens.
How? By putting foreign employees first and citizens second. Look at our city Hargeisa and how invaded we are by foreign employees and workers that seems to augment by the minutes. What happen? Why do we need foreign employees? What happened to our local employees and workers?
The answer is simple nothing happened to our local employees except that our companies CEO’s love foreign employees and workers in fact it’s more than love they trust them more than their owns. Let me tell you a short story a friend of mine told me that pushed me to write this article. One company that I wouldn’t name it hired some Ugandan contractors and started their work and spent pleasant times in Hargeisa and saw how naively foolish we are that one of the three contractors asked for his girlfriend to be brought to Hargeisa because he just felt bored.
This Ugandans got a contract plus their accommodations on top of that but it wasn’t enough till one of the contractors asked for his girlfriend to be brought and it did worked the company CEO brought the girlfriend free of charge. Imagine! When the girlfriend arrived the boo took her to Deero Mall shopping, they went into Dollar Store while checking the girl saw a beautiful ladies handbag that she grabbed, after a while they went out to the exit-door way and a loud sound was emitted because the bag the girlfriend grabbed had its electronic tag on it that she didn’t thought Hargeisa Shops could be equipped, to her amazement the security guys came close to her that no one was able to approach the lady and search her or even had the nerve to take the handbag from her. And what happen was really funny one of the workers came to the girl and put off the electronic tag smiling wishing the girl a pleasant evening and that is how foolishly we love foreigners.
A young citizen was escorting the Ugandans during their journey that when this happened he got so shocked that he thought not only this act of thievery will ruin their jobs, and above all that will badly damage the image of the company but none of what he thought happened. When the CEO of a company believes in foreigner hand by accepting all sort of demands I think that we don’t have to be shocked of Dollar Store security actions. Let’s speak out and get the first priority when it comes to employment and the other thing is Immigration services should do their work by issuing work permits to all foreigners and all foreigners permanent residence & visas should be checked to a daily bases because we’ve got so many foreigners that are illegally living in Hargeisa not paying taxes. Somaliland CEO’s should put more trust into their citizens and leave this vulgar mentality of theirs that believes foreign employees attracts more customers or delivers a better service.
Some of Hargeisa CEO’s gave the marketing position to a Ugandan or Kenyan and the truth is what can a Kenyan or Ugandan knows of Somali marketing ways because it isn’t an international platform which is different when dealing domestically. Trust your people to get a service of excellence instead of paying quadruply a foreign employee leaving your citizens unattended.
