By Abdul-Jalil Mustafa.
Amman, 12 May:
Libyans in Jordan whose medical treatment is now complete have been asked to to leave the country by . . .[restrict]Tuesday 15 May. They will no longer be funded after that date. The advise has come from the Libyan Medical Committee in Jordan.
”Those who have completed their treatment are requested to leave, while others who are still receiving treatment and who have been dispatched to Jordan through the Libyan Ministry of Health can stay to complete their treatment,” the chairman of the Libyan Medical Committee Ali Bin Jalil said.
He pointed out that many Libyans who had completed their treatment were still staying in Jordan thus ”adding to our financial burdens as we have to pay for their accommodation and other expenses.”
He said that his panel had arranged flights for Libyans to leave the country by Tuesday.
According to the Jordan Hotel Association (JHA), about 6,500 Libyans were still staying in Jordanian hotels.
The JHA director Yaser Majali said that the Libyan government’s outstanding dues to hotels for accommodating thousands of Libyan patients amounted to 90 million Jordanian dinars ($127 million).
Meanwhile, Jordanian Health Minister Abdullateef Woraikat on Friday assured the country’s private hospitals that the Libyan government would shortly pay the overdue bills for treating some 50,000 Libyan patients. The amount is some JD 60 million ($85 million). He said that such a commitment had been give to him last week by the Libyan Second Deputy Prime Minister Omar Abdul-Karim while on a visit to Jordan.
However, Abdul-Karim stressed the need for checking all hospital bills by the Jordanian authorities before payment to ensure their authenticity and to uncover any fraud.
Woraikat made his statement during a meeting with the President of the Private Hospitals Association (PHA), Fawzi Hammouri.
The PHA records indicate that about 50,00 Libyans, most of them revolutionaries who fought to topple Qaddafi’s regime, had been treated in the Jordan since July 2011 at an estimated cost of JD 130 million.
According to Hammouri there still are about 1,500 Libyan currently receiving medical treatment in Jordan. He added that the treatment of Libyan patients there represented only one-tenth of the costs that would have to paid elsewhere. [/restrict]
