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"The State of Israel working with other refugees' managing organizations has
requested Uganda to allow about 500 Eritreans and Sudanese to relocate to
Uganda. The government and ministry are positively considering the
request," Musa Ecweru, Minister of State for Relief, Disaster Preparedness
and Refugees, said in a statement. About 4,000 migrants have left Israel for
Rwanda and Uganda since 2013 under a voluntary program but Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under pressure from his right-wing
voter base to expel thousands more. In January, Israel started handing out
notices to male migrants from Eritrea and Sudan giving them three months to
take the voluntary deal with a plane ticket and $3,500 or risk being thrown in
jail.
The government said from April it would start forced deportations but rights
groups challenged the move and Israel's Supreme Court has issued a
temporary injunction to give more time for the petitioners to argue against the
plan.Government representatives told the court earlier this week that an
envoy was in an African country finalising a deportation deal after an
arrangement with Rwanda to take migrants expelled under the new measures
fell through. Until Friday's statement, Ugandan officials had denied to
Reuters that their government was in talks with Israel to resettle migrants.
Ecweru said "all refugees world over" should be "voluntarily repatriated with
strict observance and adherence to international law", but did not give further
details on the possible deal.
UNHCR URGES NETANYAHU TO
RECONSIDER MIGRANTS
AGREEMENT
Since 2005 a total of 64,000 Africans have entered Israel illegally over its
border with Egypt.
The agency noted that it sees the agreement as a “win-win” that would
benefit both Israel and asylum-seekers.
The failure to stop a brain drain of almost 2,000 of its best doctors and nurses is
exacerbating Uganda’s healthcare crisis, reflecting a growing problem across
east Africa, say healthcare workers. At least 1,963 medics are being recruited to
work at one hospital alone in Libya, as Middle Eastern countries turn to the
region for highly qualified workers to fill their own vacancies, which have
increased amid political instability and migration. Nurses, laboratory technicians
and doctors in different fields are being recruited from public health facilities,
private hospitals and the not-for-profit sector, with no clear government plan to
mitigate the impact on the domestic health sector, medical workers say. “This one
[Libyan] deal, if executed, will worsen the shortage of health workers,
undermining service delivery and the investment by donors to the health sector,”
said a statement from the Uganda Civil Society HIV Prevention Advocacy
Coalition.
“As a government, we can’t stop health workers from going to work abroad if they
want to. Since we have free movement of labour in Uganda, there is no reason as
to why we can stop them from going,” said health minister Sarah Achieng
Opendi.
“We also can’t absorb all [these workers] in our health government system
because of the wage bill and [limits on staff levels]. We tried to put a system to
bond health worker students who complete studies on government sponsorship.
But it doesn’t work – they took us to court. The case is still pending.”
Every year, at least 320 medical students graduate from Ugandan universities,
more than in any east African nation. But public hospitals are very short staffed.
The medical brain drain is not restricted to Uganda – but common across sub-
Saharan Africa. A 2011 study found, for example, that 77% of physicians who had
trained in Liberia were working in the US.
Meanwhile, HIV activists have criticised the labour ministry for allowing
recruitment agencies to insist that applicants undergo an HIV test, which is
against Ugandan law on the workplace.
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“Mandatory HIV testing deprives someone of their rights to privacy and dignity,
and also those taken through the test and found HIV positive are denied the
opportunity to work. Despite the fact that they meet the qualifications, their right
to equal opportunity is denied,” said Dorah Kiconco, of the Uganda Network on
Law, Ethics and HIV–Aids. “This is wrong on all fronts. HIV does not make
someone incapable of doing what they can do.”