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How DNRD helps illegals go home

DUBAI — Illegals who have completed the amnesty formalities but have no resources to buy the air-tickets, can look forward to a Good Samaritan — the Dubai Naturalisation and Residency Department (DNRD).

A senior DNRD official has said the department would be providing air-tickets to the illegals once it’s verified that they indeed are not in a position to buy the tickets.

Brigadier Mohammed Ahmed Al Marri, director of DNRD, said they had already come across a few such “special humanitarian cases”. He added: “When amnesty-seekers approach our department claiming they cannot return home because of financial problems we look into their situation,” Brig. Al Marri said.

One such case to draw the attention of DNRD is one of Hanifa, a 40-year-old single Ugandan woman, who has been living as a homeless in Dubai for more than five months now. Brig. Al Marri has pledged help to the Ugandan woman after being apprised of her wretched condition.

Hanifa was brought to the UAE by a cleaning company on a visit visa in September 2005. She worked for the company till October 2006 when she was fired from the job. “At that time I was working on a visit visa, which expired in December 2005. I used to share an apartment with two women in Al Hamriyah area. In May this year, I was forced to vacate the place as I did not have the money to pay the rent,” she recounted.

Ever since, Hanifa has been leading a homeless life. “I tried very hard to search for a job but nobody wanted to recruit me because of my age and my illegal status. I used to offer cleaning services to some houses to survive.”

Hanifa cannot seek the help of the embassy of Uganda as there is no Ugandan mission based in the UAE. The nearest embassy of Uganda is located in Saudi Arabia.

For many months now, Hanifa has been living in a tent in a residential area in Hamriyah in a precarious situation, surviving on the meals provided by a Kenyan lady who lives nearby. Since she completed the amnesty formalities, Hanifa has been longing to go back home. The DNRD promise has made her hopes soaring. And lately, she has begun smiling, something she had forgotten for quite sometime.