Nurses face threat in Libya too

With the strife in West Asian countries intensifying, Keralites are increasingly getting caught in the crossfire.

Close on the heels of the death of at least two Keralites in Kabul in a mine blast, the plight of hundreds of nurses from Kerala in the Libyan capital of Tripoli has come as a shocker.

“Earlier, we had only heard about the fighting that was going on in Libya. However, for the past five days it has become a reality for us. It was three days back that the bombardment intensified. First we could only see the smoke coming up from distant areas, but now we can feel the pounding and see the fire and buildings going up in smoke from the roof top of our hostel,” said Shyni Rajeev, a nurse at the Al Khadra Hospital in Tripoli, over the phone.

She has been working there for the past 15 months along with more than 60 nurses from Kerala. “Life has become increasingly dangerous and we cannot even go out to the market,” she said.

The nurses who stay at the hostel have to make their own arrangements for conveyance to go to the hospital and return. “They do not provide us any vehicle. We have to catch taxi on our own and travel to the hospital and back,” she said.

There were instance of their mobile phones being confiscated when they went out, she said.

Many hurdles

Most of them are ready to come back. But their journey is hampered as their passports have not been returned. “They said it will be delayed on account of Ramzan holidays,” she said.

Shyni’s husband Rajeev is a construction company employee and his parents live in Alappuzha.

Sreerekha Surendran, a colleague of Shyni, had joined the hospital 18 months ago. “She had talked to us on Thursday morning,” her sister Renju said.

“Though there are problems in Libya, the capital city is safe. But it is only during the last few days that things turned for the worse,” she said.

Though the hospital is functioning, the number of patients has declined and now they have to attend increasingly to those wounded in the strife.

Al Khadra is only one of the hospitals served by nurses from Kerala. At Tripoli Medical Centre (TMC) there are more than 300 nurses from Kerala and Tripoli has a sizeable number of Keralites working as nurses, though many others are in semi-skilled jobs, said Shyni.

With the internal strife getting stepped up, all are looking up to the Indian authorities for a safe passage to the motherland.