Syria:

Emergency evacuation on the cards if situation worsens

By Manjula FERNANDO

As the ground battles in Syria shifted from the capital Damascus to Aleppo, the largest city in the country, located northwest and 310 km off Damascus intensified thirty five Sri Lankans were still employed there, anxiously praying that normalcy will return soon. Three of them have lost their jobs due to raging battles and were anticipating sponsored air tickets to fly back home. They have been without work for the past four weeks.

Dasun (pseudonym) who is working in a foreign diplomatic mission speaking to the Sunday Observer on the phone said, although the fighting has eased off in Damascus, the situation was still volatile.

"It is calm and relatively quiet on the surface, with just occasional explosions being heard, but we are not quite sure what will happen the next moment."

He is working for a foreign mission in the Syrian capital and has no plans to come back yet since the job he secured is well paid and hard to replace.

"We are all living here in the capital, we stayed here even when intense fighting was going on. " No Sri Lankan was injured in the fighting between the rebels and the Syrian government forces, that has been raging since early this year. Over 1000 Sri lankan migrant workers were living in Syria a few months back but after the clashes grew into a full scale civil war, almost all of them have fled the country.

Sri Lankan ambassador to Lebanon, Ranjith Gunaratna is in close contact with the Sri Lankans who are still in Syria. "We have already communicated an emergency evacuation route for them if the need arises.

They have been asked to travel by land to the Lebanese-Syrian border which is about an hours drive and from there transport and temporary shelter will be provided until their return home," he told Sunday Observer in a telephone interview.

The Sri Lankans attached to diplomatic missions in Syria will have easy pass through the boarder but those working as domestic aides or casual workers may have to be facilitated with special arrangements to cross the border.

The Ambassador said they were prepared to face any eventuality to get them safely across to Lebanon if the fighting intensifies in the coming days.

Ambassador Gunaratna is continuing negotiations with the IOM, International Labour Organisation (ILO), Caritas and the Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau (SLBFE) to facilitate a possible mass repatriation if Sri Lankans have to be taken out of Syria.

Twelve workers who lost their jobs or wanted to leave due to the worsening situation arrived in Colombo last Monday (Aug 6). Of them six were provided air tickets by the Embassy in Lebanon, funded by IOM.

They left via Damascus airport which is still functioning. In spite of the tense situation shops remain open but prices of commodities were sky rocketing.

Due to a power crisis, a four-hour power cut has also been imposed. Despite their own economic woes, Sri Lankans have been providing for the three unemployed workers, two men and a woman who were waiting to return home. Thusith Perera 33, of Kandy had been unemployed for quite awhile.

He was doing part time for sometime. He is among the three people waiting to come back with the intervention of the Sri Lankan embassy in Lebanon. The other two, a husband and a wife, are Bengalage Nayana Nilanka, 32 of Narammala and Dammith Nishantha de Silva, 37 of Kantale.

The Ambassador in Lebanon said there were isolated cases of fighting in the border villages within Lebanon between groups supporting and opposing Syrian leader Assad. He said there was no urgent concern but his office is on alert for any need to get Sri Lankans in such areas evacuated if the need arises.

According to unofficial sources there is a population of nearly 85,000 migrant workers in Lebanon, most of whom are domestic helpers.