The Malawi delegation has recommended to government to expedite the process of signing a government-to-government agreement with the Israeli authorities that would guide formal operationalisation of labour export deal.

Chairperson for the delegation Joyce Chitsulo has told Parliament that leaving such a huge deal in the hands of recruitment agents’ risks exploiting the workers.

Chitsulo said: “We recommended that today should be the government-to-government agreement. This will help to outline clearly how the programme will be implemented which will go to the issues of how their salaries will be paid, we suggested that they should be paid in the Malawian account.

“So that is the issue Forex is taken care of and so that they open for foreign denominated accounts here in our local bank and every month when salaries come, they should go in those accounts in the process increasing the Forex levels.”

Chitsulo added that the recruitment of workers should be done at the constituency level by accredited agents, unlike the current setup.

“Another issue is that in terms of selection, we noted as a delegation that because the people that were selected to go to Israel were not from the very rural areas, they are not the people that you know are suitable for the jobs.

“The jobs in Israel are manual so getting graduates it’s challenging because the type of work they are doing and the qualifications they have they feel that it’s not on, that’s why some of them are running away,” said Chitsulo.

The delegation has also established that close to 700 Malawian workers were placed in Israel out of which 27 had run away from their respective farms.

According to treasury, the country has generated US$735, 000 from the Malawi-Israel labour export arrangement.