A Chinese national who is the head chef at the Chez Wou Restaurant located at Kileleshwa estate, Kenya, was captured in a video lashing an employee for reporting to work late whilst other workers watched from afar.
This according to reports is not the first time he has physically assaulted Kenyan employees. One of the workers said in an interview that, “He walks around with the whip. He uses it solely in disciplining us. When he goes home, he locks it in the store”.
The victim who was identified as Simon Oseko equally confessed that he has suffered from this brutish treatment for about six months before he was sacked prematurely.
The video which was first published by K24 TV went viral and got a lot of people, especially Kenyans very angry. The issue of foreigners maltreating African employees is not new.
There has been and are still, several of such incidents ongoing all over the continent. Many people are suffering but the mere fear of losing jobs has kept a lot of them from complaining or reporting the perpetrators of such acts to the relevant authorities.
In Ghana for instance, an employee of an oil company was chained to a container by his Italian employer for loitering during working hours, a Lebanese employer poured hot pepper in the face of a female employee. Chinese nationals engage in illegal mining in Ghana, depletes forest reserves, pollute water bodies that provide drinking water to many people and maltreat several of their employees but they walk free.
The fact must be established that we do not hate any foreigner, neither are we preventing them from doing business in Africa. What they need to understand is that there are laws in Africa that regulate labor-related activities which they must respect. No African can do such things in China, Lebanon, Italy or any other country and go scot-free.
Marcus Garvey once said that, “a race without authority and power, is a race without respect” and this is exactly what is happening to Africa. Our system is broken to such extent that, everybody want to take advantage of us.
Our leadership must get serious and take steps to protect the citizenry. Punitive measures must be implored to send a strong message of deterrence to these foreigners who have over the years built the mindset that, they can take undue advantage of African employees and walk free.
