Despite the Indian Government’s all-out efforts to evacuate its citizens from strife-torn Yemen and the Kerala Government’s repeated appeals to Malayalees in the Gulf country to use all available avenues to get out of the country as soon as possible, several Keralites working there are still showing unwillingness to leave.
“Our people in Yemen should utilise all opportunities they get to return home as fast as they can,” said Kerala’s Culture Minister KC Joseph, who is also in-charge of Non-Resident Keralite Affairs, on Monday. “They should remember that Yemen is a war zone. The situation may look calm for sometime but that calmness can end anytime,” he said.
However, several Malayalees working in Yemeni areas where a semblance of calm prevails are still uncertain about whether they should return. “I am not sure whether I should leave. I am confused,” said Aida, a nurse working in Hajja, northwest of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, told The Pioneer on Monday.
Aida, hailing from Aluva near Kochi and working in a Government hospital in Hajja, said that the Indian Embassy in Sana’a had given them several instructions to leave. “It is said that we should leave before April 9. I don’t know if we will be able to do that. Taking a decision is very difficult,” Aida, one of the seven Malayalee nurses of the particular hospital, said.
The nurse, who has been working in Yemen for the past seven years, said that Hajja looked safe and that seeing the city one could not even imagine that a war was going on anywhere in the country. “However, there are signs of problems. We haven’t got our salary for March so far. It should have something to do with the conflict in Sana’a,” she said.
A Keralite working in a construction project in Al Hudaydah, the west Yemen port city, said he was thinking of not returning. “We do not have any problem so far and there has never been any need to stop the project because of the conflict. Besides, payment is prompt. I have been here only for a year and I don’t want to lose the chance to make some money,” he said.
But people who have lived in Yemen for years and have known its geography and politics closely, warn that the calm many places now witness can be treacherous. “There is a tendency to underestimate the Houthi militia fighting the Government there as a crude tribal rebel force. That impression is wrong,” said a petro-professional who did not want to be identified.
“The situation may change any moment in the presently calm places,” said the Keralite petro-professional who had worked in Yemen for over 15 years. “What is happening there is not a riot but a real war. What I hear is that the Houthis in Sana’a and Al Qaeda in Al Mukalla are now trying to march into the rural areas. Then the situation will change,” he said.
At the same time, Minister KC Joseph termed as wrong the reports that the Indian Embassy in Sana’a had asked Indians to leave Yemen before April 9. “I talked with the Ambassador. He told me that no such deadline had been set. In fact, the Yemeni authorities do not want Indians to leave,” Joseph said.
After a high-level meeting on the Yemen situation, chaired by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, Joseph said that 821 Keralites had returned home from Yemen since April 1 and that there were about 3,000 Malayalees there. Most of the Keralites who had returned from Yemen so far were from the cities and evacuation of those in the remote areas of Yemen was yet to pick up speed.