A damning email sent to this writer demonstrates the incomprehensible demands that young female Kenyans who applied for in-service crew jobs with the SGR were put through, with both Kenyan officials and their Chinese counterparts openly demanding sexual favours to increase chances of one landing a job with the SGR.
“Typically, you’d be invited for an interview then later in the evening receive a call requiring you to go this hotel where no other business can take place, other than a trap for sex,” the email reads.
It continues, “You either find a lone male SGR executive, and because the Chinese…they all look alike, you can’t for sure tell if he is the one who interviewed you or not. For my friend, she found the one who called him in the company of others, at what point he excused himself after her arrival and took her to a room, the hotel room, where you are just the two of you, with copies of your application documents on the table.”
“In my case, he pointed the bed to me, and I said no; and at that point, he just showed me the door. The whole thing took less than five minutes. The experience haunts me to date…I think that’s why I didn’t make it. I refused to bed him.”
“My friend refuses to tell me what she did, but she got the job, she’s among the first crew. Our relationship has really deteriorated as we no longer talk much…you know how joblessness makes your circle of friends reduce each time one gets a job? That’s how it is now,” reads the email.
As at the time of filing this report, a letter Kenya Today sent to CRBC had not been responded to.
To be employed by the SGR, one had to apply to the Human Resources Manager of China Road and Bridge Company (CRBC), the Chinese consortium together with an Australian firm that is set to run the SGR for the next ten years ‘due to shortage of local manpower to manage’ the SGR, as has previously been stated.
Already, there are reports that the SGR first class is totally a no-go-zone for Kenyan stewardesses, with services provided by Chinese female stewardesses, many who are in the country on temporary work permits, as part of the concession Kenya government had with China.
Kenyans were also left out in the translation of objects and signs, with the revelations that Chinese fluent in Swahili got the jobs to translate the instructional manual to English, despite Kenya being a mandatory Kiswahili-English speaking country, with thousands of Kiswahili and English Language/Literature graduates languishing in joblessness.
Every facet of the SGR economy is dominated by Chinese, a fact the government acknowledges in low tones, having failed to negotiate the human resource and technical personnel threshold that must go to Kenyans.
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