According to Tirtha Aryal, first secretary at the embassy, mainly two plans have been floated to evacuate around 600 Nepali migrant workers, who have been taking shelter at a party place for the last few days, from Darnah. With protests against Libyan President Col Muammar Gaddafi truning violent, thousands of foreign workers have started fleeing Libya.[break]
The embassy has initiated plan to bring Nepali workers from Darnah to Cairo, which is around 800 kilometers, by road after the South Korea employer, the Own Construction, said it was unable to arrange evacuation citing closure of banks and disruption in vehicular movement across Libya.
"We contacted the general administrator of the South Korean company," Aryal told Republica. "He told us that the company cannot arrange rescue flights at the moment as all banks in Libya are closed, and they are facing trouble to venture outside their office. Therefore, we will first take Nepali workers to Cairo and then to Kathmandu."
According to Aryal, another plan is to take all Nepali workers to Tripoli, the capital of Libya, and then airlift them to Cairo. "We will rescue the workers by Thursday," he told Republica, adding, "We have already initiated a process to obtain legal permission from the Egyptian authorities to rescue our citizens."
As the Libyan unrest turns bloody, with around 500 killed, governments of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, alongside Nepal, have started attempts to evacuate their citizens from Libya. With the reported death of an Indian migrant worker in Libya on Tuesday, the Nepali embassy has felt a sense of urgency to rescue its citizens. Around 2,000 Nepali migrant laborers are working in Libya.
The ordeal continues
Although no Nepali casualty has been reported so far, Nepali workers are under the risk of falling victims to the riots that have engulfed Libya, especially after local protestors burnt their camps in Darnah a week ago. They are now living on bread and water provided by a local charity.
According to Dubar Chandra Rai, a resident of Buipa-5 in Khotang district, many of them have caught cold and cough as they have been sleeping on the cement floor of the party place, which is overcrowded with hundreds of migrant workers including Indians and Bangladeshis, on thin sheets of cloth. A Nepali worker, Raj Kumar Bhandari from Jhapa district who underwent a surgery of appendicitis only a couple of weeks ago, has fallen sick. "However, we have not been able to take him to hospital," Rai said.
Rai, who went to Libya through Nepal-based SOS Manpower Agency to work in the Darnah housing project one year ago, says that they all are restlessly waiting for evacuation by Nepal government. "All of us are tired of hiding here," he told Republica. "However, we have not heard a single word about our rescue from the embassy till now."
The Darnah-based Nepali workers, who had been confined within their construction site by irate anti-government protestors a month ago, had spent a couple of sleepless nights in a school after the protestors brunt their hutments. They left the school premises and have been taking shelter at the party place for the last four days.
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