The Labour Ministry Calls Reports That the Job-Market System Is Closed 'Completely Baseless'

The Ministry of Labour and Skills has rejected claims circulating about Ethiopia's overseas employment process, saying information that the labour market information system has been closed, or that citizens are no longer being deployed, is without basis.

The statement was issued in the context of the employment agreement between Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia, which the ministry said has been the subject of what it called wrong and baseless information.

The ministry's position

Saudi Arabia is one of the main destinations for Ethiopians seeking work abroad, the ministry said, and continues to be a key partner within the state-controlled framework that governs foreign employment.

That framework is the point of the rebuttal. Ethiopia's overseas labour deployment runs through registered agencies and a government information system; a claim that the system has closed is, in effect, a claim that the legal route has shut — which historically pushes would-be migrants toward the irregular one.

Open

The ministry did not publish deployment figures for the current period, name the reports it was responding to, or say what — if anything — has changed in the agreement's terms. Without numbers, a denial that the system is closed is not the same as evidence that it is working.

Sources: Tikvah Ethiopia, 19 September 2026