(ERGO) – Lay‑offs by aid agencies have left about 500 refugees in Kenya’s Dadaab complex without wages, forcing their families to skip meals and slide deeper into debt.
Terre des Hommes, Save the Children, Kenya Red Cross, the Lutheran World Federation and the UN Refugee Agency cut locally contracted staff in April across Dadaab’s three camps – Hagadera, Ifo and Dagahaley – citing funding shortfalls.
The dismissals came on top of recent reductions in food rations and the suspension in June of the $6.4 monthly cash top‑up that refugees had received per household member.
Adan Aweys Abdullahi had earned 10,000 Kenya shillings a month as a child protection officer with Terre des Hommes in Hagadera.
“We ran out of milk for the children. We ran out of food for the family, because the regular allowance we used to receive every month is gone. Now we only cook once, usually once in 24 hours,” he said.
The family’s grain allocation, already halved in recent years, ran out on 10 July. Adan, 37, now borrows a friend’s donkey cart to deliver well water around the camp, making about 300 shillings if he finds customers.
“To manage the family, I don’t sit still. I go to the town, riding with a friend who drives a donkey cart; I was working with him today and made my daily living from it, but it’s not like that every day. Today I earned 300!”
Credit is keeping the household afloat. They now owe a shop owner who supplied food during May and June 30,000 shillings [approx. $232].
“When I’m walking that debt nags me with worry because when I pass the shop when go along that road every day, and the shop owner says – I still haven’t been paid, why are you avoiding me…and he subjects me to lots of questions. I feel worried because I don’t have the money, and I can’t go to the man’s shop anymore,” he said.
Adan’s family fled Sakow in Somalia’s Middle Juba region in 2006 after conflict and drought left them unable to live off their 10‑hectare farm. He was a young man then but refugee camp life holds little promise now.
Majid Dahir Adan, 24, was supporting 12 relatives on his 12,000 shilling salary as a photographer with FilmAid, until the charity closed its outreach programme in April.
“I’ve learned a skill so I can’t just sit idle, it hurts me. Now I take photos with my camera for people, and whatever I get from doing those jobs I use it to survive on it, although these jobs are not consistent. They just come occasionally,” he said.
The loss of his regular wages and monthly cash assistance has cut the family’s meals to one a day.
“It has greatly affected me. We had lunch, breakfast, and dinner before, but it’s become very difficult. Sometimes there is no lunch or breakfast, only dinner. The money I used to earn from work used to support the family but it’s all stopped.”
Majid’s family arrived in Dadaab in 2010 when conflict drove them from Mogadishu.
Traders in the camps say business has slowed because families no longer have disposable income. Abbas Abdullahi Abdi, deputy head of the Ifo Camp Youth Umbrella, warned of rising insecurity.
“Since the small amount of money was cut off from the youth, 75 per cent are now jobless. Some have resorted to taking drugs like weed and marijuana and other narcotics, some are just wandering around, and some commit offences that is not good for the security.
Life has changed; many things have happened in the camp. Theft has greatly increased, and young people are just idle without purpose,” he said.
Dadaab, close to the Somali border in Kenya’s Garissa County, now hosts more than 370,000 refugees, most of them Somali. A typical ration covers about half the daily calories required, leaving families to find the rest through work or cash assistance.
Youth positions with aid agencies once bridged that gap; with those jobs gone and no replacement livelihood schemes in place, households like Adan’s and Majid’s fear worsening hunger and mounting debts.