By Libya Herald reporters.
Tripoli, 28 February 2016:
When they are paid at all, migrant workers in Tripolitania are often being robbed of . . .[restrict]their savings by militias or kidnapped until their friends can find money for their release. A rising tide of despair among such workers, who paid to be smuggled overland into Libya, is causing a growing exodus.
The International Organisation for Migration’s Tripoli office this week flew home 117 Burkino Faso nationals who had found themselves stranded in Libya. The charter flight from Mitiga airport to Ouagadougou included five women and two children.
When they arrived back home, IOM officials gave them tickets to travel on to their families. Twenty individuals identified in Libya as being highly vulnerable were given small grants to help them reintegrate.
The IOM say some migrants told harrowing stories. One remembered his being smuggled into Libya. He was crushed and injured with 39 others into the back of a Toyota pickup. A friend who had asked the driver to stop for a break.was thrown off , beaten and left to die in the Niger desert.
Another said that he lived in constant fear of the police and militias who seized people for a ransom of LD1,000. Another claimed that three weeks earlier armed men had burst into his home and stolen all the money he had earnt from working in construction.
IOM Libya’s Othman Belbeisi told the Libya Herald that that the number of migrants wanting to go home was on the rise. The organisation’s Tripoli office either has people walking in and asking for help or they are referred by embassies or groups that are working with among migrants trapped in the country.
“A verification process is carried out by qualified staff, “said Belbeisa, “to ensure the voluntariness of the return and that that person is eligible for return assistance”. He added that the IOM was shortly setting up hotline for those who wished to be repatriated. Its present work in repatriating migrants from Libya is being funded by the EU, Italy and Norway. [/restrict]
