Passport seized, 19 nurses stuck in Iraq

Alappuzha: Though 46 nurses from Tikrit in Iraq have returned to the safety of their motherland,  there are many others still living in panic in the war-torn country and wanting to come back. V. Neethu, a nurse from Thulaparampu south, Haripad, working in Baquba General Hospital in Diyala, Iraq, called up her husband R. Rajeev on June 10  as two security troops who were patrolling in the hospital area were shot dead by the insurgents of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

The frightened Neethu asked her husband to find a way to bring her home. She said, “nineteen Malayali nurses are stranded here. The authorities of the hospital are not willing to hand over  our passports.  We need immediate help.”

The helpless Rajeev telephoned Mr P. Sudip, CEO of Norka, and the official said that everything on the ground was okay. He promised to bring back his wife soon and cut off the telephone. However, later Rajeev tried to contact him again  several times  but none from the  government has called him so far. 

“I find it difficult to contact my wife over phone these days though she said all the 19 nurses are safe.  The Iraqi citizens working in the hospital have left for Turkey as refugees.  But the hospital authorities are not permitting the nurses to leave  saying that they have signed the contract for one year,” he says.

Neethu, who completed BSc nursing from a private college in Bangalore five years ago, was working as a staff nurse in a hospital in New Delhi before going to Iraq along with a group of Kerala nurses on February 18. Her husband, who is also a nurse by profession, says though she was offered 750 USD as salary, it was  pending for the last two months.

“Neethu  went to Iraq as she had taken a loan of  Rs 6 lakh for her studies.  Now, we don’t know how the loan will be repaid,” he laments. Neethu told her husband that the main road to Baghdad had been cleared for traffic for the last two days. But  nobody knows when things will go wrong. Mr Ajayakumar, Indian ambassador to Iraq, keeps calling the hospital authorities to find a way out, but nothing has materialised yet.    

Baqubah is the capital of Diyala,  60 km north of  Baghdad. According to a report, 44 prisoners were killed during an overnight combat at a police station in Diyala. The ISIS rebels had taken control of several districts on the western outskirts of the city before these were regained by government troops.

The panic-stricken family members are spending their days sitting in front of the television to  know the developments. Neethu’s father Venugopalan Pillai, a cop in coastal police station in Thottapally here, has appealed to the state and central  governments to act to save the nurses.