PEOPLE WHO WENT TO LEBANON FULL OF DREAMS OF CARING FOR THEIR LOVED ONES RETURNED PENNILESS AT KATUNAYAKA
Workers, who were evacuated from Lebanon, arrive at the Katunayaka airport July 22, 2006
(photo by :Anuruddha Lokuhapuarachchi)
(By Walter Jayawardhana)
Los Angeles:- The first 217 people arrived at Colombo’s International Airport escaping from Lebanon’s war were handed over five thousand Rupees (50 US Dollars) per adult and two thousand five hundred Rupees per child as pocket money to go home by the International Migrants Organization representatives .
The International Migrant’s Organization which has been coordinating with the Sri Lanka Embassy in Beirut and Caritas organization to bring home at least some of the stranded Sri Lankan citizens from Lebanon said they were expecting about 400 more people in the next flight at Katunayaka.
The Sri lankan Airlines plane brought the war refugees from the Syrian capital Damascus to where these people were sent from Beirut the capital of Lebanon. The mostly working class women who went to Lebanon to earn some money to care more for their loved ones returned home with shattered dreams.
Some who returned said they had no time to earn any thing and save and had to return in the same clothes they bought to go to Lebanon. Many feared that they could foresee a grim future for them since some even mortgaged their properties to pay some job agencies to go to Lebanon .
Some said after working for about one and half years they did not receive any pay and waiting the salaries to be collected later. But their employers disappeared due to war deserting them, some complained.
Some even lost their baggage on the way.
They were full of grim stories of the Israeli bombing , encouraged by the United States to take revenge from Hisbollah but actually victimized all kinds of Lebanese people . One third of those who were killed out of more than 300 civilians were children. At least two Sri Lankans have been reported killed in the Southern region of Lebanon.The remains of house maid Vinitha Mallika who died in the Israel bombing in the City of Tyre was cremated there.
