Malawi to Export 100,000 Youths to South Korea Factories

{{The government of Malawi has defended a controversial deal it struck with South Korea to export up to 100,000 of its young people as migrant workers.}}

Opposition MPs in Malawi have called the deal “slave labour”.

But the labour minister, struggling to create new job employment opportunities in her own country, has denied that.

Eunice Makangala said she “just” wanted “to help the young people in Malawi” who are due to leave for Seoul to work.

Malawian President Joyce Banda reportedly made an agreement with the government of South Korea on a visit there in February this year.

It involves sending young Malawian men and women aged between 18 and 25 to jobs in factories and on farms on the Korean peninsula, he says.

Accurate unemployment figures in Malawi are hard to compute because of the lack of a national identification system to track those out of a job.

But recent research suggests that 80% of secondary school graduates in Malawi return to their villages every year because they can neither find jobs nor employ themselves.

Nevertheless, opposition MPs in the capital, Lilongwe, are furious about the plan to export labour.

BBC