Ruto: I am flying to Germany tonight to organise jobs for 200,000 Kenyans

President William Ruto on Sunday said he will be flying to Germany in the evening to pursue employment opportunities for Kenyans in the European country.

Speaking at a church service in Sotik, Bomet County, Ruto said this was following German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to Kenya in May when he announced that the German leader had agreed to open doors to 250,000 professional, skilled and semi-skilled Kenyans in an effort to meet Germany's huge labour requirements.

“I was in Saudi Arabia; the German chancellor was in Kenya a few months ago and tonight I am flying to Germany because he promised employment opportunities for 200,000 Kenyans and I have to go organise for that. We also have an agreement with the French president and other leaders from all over the world,” the president said.

Ruto said youth employment is what will help lower the skyrocketing cost of living and pledged to continue pursuing labour agreements abroad.

He told the congregation that he and Labour Cabinet Secretary Florence Bore are seeking to sign pacts which will see Kenya send over 3,000 workers abroad every week.

“Together with Bore, we are signing bilateral labour agreements to export Kenyan labour. Every week, we want an export of about 3,000 to 5,000 people to provide labour all over the world so that they can bring us money to transform this country,” President Ruto said.

He, however, did not mention when the government plans to begin sending Kenyans abroad under the agreements.

At the same time, Ruto dismissed critics of his tens of foreign trips since he assumed office in September last year, saying, “When I am leaving the country, it is not like I am on a tourist mission; it is to work for Kenyans. I know why I was elected.”

Ruto recently said he had struck an agreement with the American tech corporations Amazon, Intel and Google during his US-Kenya roadshow in September that will see the companies give Kenyans thousands of what he described as “digital jobs".

“They want us to give them 100,000, 200,000 and 300,000 workers out of the Kenyan youth,” the president told a church service in Nairobi’s Lang’ata area on October 1, without getting into specifics of which corporation promised to employ what number of workers.