(ERGO) – Since losing his job on building sites in April, Abadir Hussein Ishaq has been unable to support his family of 14 people including his wife in Hagadera camp in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee complex.
“My family is faced with a desperate situation. There is nothing I can give my wife. I have young children at home. I have nothing and I don’t know what to do!” he told Radio Ergo’s local reporter.
After 19 years working in construction for 19 years, Abadir says all they depend on are the limited food rations from aid organisations that don’t even get through the month until the next distribution.
“I have never been in such situation. We now eat sorghum from the UN and it is just dry. We add oil to it and that is what we have, there is nothing else we have received,” he said.
From his average $250-$300 a month earnings as a builder, he is now sitting at home earning nothing.
Abadir took $800 in loans after losing his job, hoping to find other work soon. But three months later he isa still unemployed and the debts are rising with no ability to pay them back.
“We are poor people and we have nothing. Where can we go now? The people are all in similar living conditions, there is nothing in the refugee camps,” he said.
According to the head of construction workers in Hagadera, Isse Ibrahim, there are about 600 workers in Dadaab camps who have lost their jobs, as the whole sector plunged into downturn. The camps have been shrinking not growing and the overall economy is at a low point.
Refugee families are entitled to 2.5 kilograms of food rations per person per month from the UN’s World Food Programme. They receive sorghum and lentils in alternating months.
Abadir said he would seek jobs outside the camps but they are not allowed to leave the camp to get work. He and his family arrived in Dadaab in 2006 after fleeing Kismayo in Somalia’s Lower Juba region. He was a labourer but the conflict in the country prompted him to seek refuge in Kenya.
Another refugee father of seven, Abdikadir Omar Ali, used to earn $10-15 a day on building sites to supplement their aid rations. He is lucky to have some work although the pay has been cut by the employers complaining of high overheads.
“We now get less than half what we used to take. So, we are poor people and the other people also don’t have much,” he said.
Abdikadir said he tried to get food on credit from local stores but the owners refused, knowing that he doesn’t have enough work to repay them. His children had to drop out of school and Koranic classes as his income reduced.
“I don’t have the money to pay their fees, three of my children were studying but they are now at home. I was paying 2,000 shillings ($15), but now I just don’t have that 2,000,” he said.
Abdikadir used to earn up to $230 a month from construction work but never managed to make any savings to help him through such times.
He and his family were displaced in 2013 from Jamame, Lower Juba region, where their three-hectare farm was ruined by severe drought.
In Hagadera, casual workers normally sit in a certain area waiting to meet with employers who are hiring. Most of the already laid off still spend the whole day there with no hope of being hired.
Mohamed Saleban Ali has been unemployed for two months. He said his nine children can barely eat the food they cook because it is so dry. He feels sad to see them hungry when he comes back home with nothing, despite actively searching for new jobs.
“We sometimes don’t get even one meal. I am almost thinking about running away from home and going away because we have nothing! I drink tea in the morning and we eat the sorghum at night with water, we have nothing else,” he said.
Mohamed used to be a porter in Mogadishu but decided to relocate to the refugee camp in 2005 because of insecurity in the capital.
