Shirley Ayorkor Botchway
If the Ministry of Foreign Affairs makes good its promise to rescue Ghanaians in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, these distressed individuals and their families at home would have been relieved.
Currently, most of them are apprehensive – unable to tell what awaits them should the promise go unfulfilled.
We do not have any reason to doubt the undertaking given the stature of the state department and the importance of the subject.
In a previous editorial, we did point out that the treatment meted out to Ghanaians and other black nationals in the Gulf States is appalling and falls below acceptable standards. That is for those who are engaged by employment and taken to these countries. In the case of those who stay back after the Hajj and others who breach immigration regulations, theirs is most despicable.
Such persons are unable to access medical treatment and in the case of death, the remains of these illegal persons are dumped in the street because those who attempt burial without valid stay papers stand the risk of being deported without the opportunity of picking personal belongings.
The recent deadline for all illegal persons to leave the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was well publicized. Those of us in Ghana were not denied the information as the media carried it sufficiently.
That even after the information to such persons to leave and an accompanying one from the Ghanaian mission that those who breached the order and remain in the Kingdom do so at their own risk, shows that such persons had no option than to wait for Manna from the Ghanaian government in the form of a gratis airlift.
The airlift of undocumented persons from the Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia is at a huge cost to the state. Against this light therefore we want to ask that those who are so returned do not make fresh attempts at returning to a country which is not known to be generous with her immigration laws.
We cannot continue as a country pumping money into airlifting illegal persons from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to Ghana only for such persons to return to that country.
Currently, a suspension has been slapped on the recruitment of Ghanaians for work in the Gulf States by the Foreign Affairs Ministry – a decision informed by the inhuman treatment meted out to our compatriots who are lured into believing that better lives await them in those countries. These persons discover when it is too late that they have been entrapped.
Until there are commitments on the part of employers in those countries to treat their employees with dignity, the suspension should remain in place.
Regarding specifically those who go to Saudi Arabia under the guise of performing the Hajj but end up staying put in the Kingdom as illegal immigrants, let new arrangements be put in place to make it impossible to breach the terms of their visas.
Agents who facilitate such breaches should be sanctioned so they do not encourage such dangerous breaches.