India to speed up evacuations from Libya

Families of those trapped in Libya have assumed that while governments of other countries have already evacuated all or most of their citizens from Libya, the Government of India was being very slow in evacuating the people even when thousands of Indians were trapped in far-off Libya.

Ex- union minister and Lok Bhalai Party chief Balwant Singh Ramoowalia, who has been requested by families of over two dozen youths here to take up the matter with the government, believed that out of the total around 18,000 Indians stranded there, only 1,134 have been evacuated.

He said, “Clearly there is no crisis management plan and we don’t even know who are the key officials in the union government who should be contacted, even as the condition in Libya is worsening with every passing day.”

Families of these youths had gathered here to raise their voice in opposition to the slow pace of evacuation. Ramoowalia pointed out that the US had evacuated all its citizens from Libya, Egypt have evacuated lakhs of its citizens, while China has brought home 29,000, of around 32,000 of its citizens.

Surjit Kaur of village Khassan in district Kapurthala said that along with his son, five youths from the village including two brothers were trapped in Sirte city of Libya. "They have been calling us to tell that they had little to eat and did not even have necessary medicines," said by her.

"The government should take steps on a war footing to bring our people back," said Darshan Singh of Lohian, whose son Lakhbir Singh is also in Sirte. Meanwhile, Ramoowalia has also written to external affairs Minister SM Krishna with specific names of the cities other than Libyan capital Tripoli where hundreds of Punjabis are trapped, who are finding it risky to travel to the capital. He said that he had got complaints that passports of people stranded there were being kept by the companies they were working for and the latter were demanding money to return the passports.

"The Indian embassies across the world are corrupt and callous towards their fellow countrymen and in this case also they apparently failed to inform the government well in time about the emerging problems," he said.

Ramandeep Singh Bharowal, general secretary of the Lok Bhalai Party said, “Most of those who are trapped they are from poor families and perhaps that is the reason that the union government is leaving them to die in the strife-torn country.”

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