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ANCHOR
OF HOPE
By
INDIA TODAY Principal
Correspondent M.G. Radhakrishnan.
Parakkatt
Narayanan, a hotel cook in Kerala's Kasargode, and his wife Madathil Gowri
couldn't believe it. It was on May 19, 1996, that their son Madathali
Raju had left for Sharjah, looking for a job. He had called soon after
he had reached but that was about all they'd heard from him. He seemed
to have just disappeared from their lives. Convinced that something had
gone wrong, the aged couple ran from pillar to post trying to locate him.
They
wrote to the Indian embassy, the state chief minister, even the prime
minister but no help came forth. Days, weeks, months, passed but there
was still no word. By the end of four years, the Narayanans conceded that
sinking feeling of having lost their son—and any hopes of his return.
Two months ago, however, a friend told Parakkat about a television programme
on NRIs in the recently launched Malayalam satellite channel, Kairali.
It was as if Pravasilokam, the programme, was made with only him in mind:
it sought to extend help to those families whose members had gone missing
in
the Gulf. There was a flicker of hope again as Parakkat got in touch with
the channel. Soon, the programme featured Raju, flashing his picture and
other details, however sketchy. A week later, the programme's anchor P.T.
Kunjumuhammed—also a filmmaker and legislator—called Parakkat.
It was a call that the Narayanans had been waiting for four years. Raju's
whereabouts had been traced and he was returning home soon, they were
told.
"Our contacts, mostly Gulf-based Malayali journalists, tracked down
Raju who had been in a jail for committing a small offence. He could not
write to his parents from jail. By the time our people visited him, he
was about to be released," says Kunjumuhammed who got in touch with
some Keralite organisations and arranged for Raju's travel back home.
Like the
Narayanans, at least 20 other families in Kerala are celebrating the return
of their lost kin, thanks to Pravasilokam. And hundreds of others see
in it a new ray of hope. As Kunjumuhammed explains, many of those missing
appear to be in various jails in the Gulf. For want of proper documents,
those convicted find it difficult to come out though the offence
committed is generally not that serious. In saudi Arabia, there were 75
cases in which Malayali migrants had been jailed and until Kairali stepped
in, their families had no idea of their whereabouts. Strangely, the Indian
embassies too have no details of all those behind bars. "Most callers
have said their repeated inquiries with the respective embassies have
been
futile," says Pravasilokam producer Rafeeq Rawther.
So when Walkie Talkie—the Kairali wing that deals with the cases—undertakes
a search it starts with few leads. Backed by the ruling CPI(M), the six-month
old channel has established a wide network of contacts, mostly Keralite,
in the Gulf countries to help it out. Playing a key role in this exercise
are journalists working with various publications in the Middle East.
Just last week, journalists in Kuwait helped locate Jameela Beevi of Thiruvananthapuram
who had been missing since August last year. She had gone there to work
as a housemaid but ended up in jail because of discrepencies in her visa
documents. Jameela is expected to return soon.
But it's
not always easy. Two young girls, Nazereth and Hannath, for instance,
are still desperately trying to locate their mother Zeenath Muhammed who
went to Kuwait to work as a housemaid two years ago. "We are virtually
starving as our father is bedridden," says Hanneth. "We have
no information about our Umma after she left." According to Kunjumuhammed,
most women who have gone missing were housemaids, who are among the worst
exploited sections in the Gulf.
Another susceptible category is that of shipworkers. K. Jayasudha of Kollam,
for instance, has sought the help of the channel to trace her husband
N.Premkumar and his friend P. Sarasan. There has been no word from the
duo after their ship MV Thani/Karamat had sailed off from Ajman to Basra
in
Iraq on a December night in 1996. This was a day after they had joined
as seamen on a ship owned by a UAE-based group. Jayasudha at one point
was told by unconfirmed sources that the ship had been held by the Iraqi
Customs and the six-member crew were under detention there. "All
our correspondence to the
Indian embassy and the shipping company has been in vain as they have
conveyed their helplessness to trace the missing ship and crew,"
says Jayasudha who is now banking on Kairali.
In a similar case, Daniel Varghese of Kayamkulam is looking for his father-in-law
K.E. Philip who has been missing since 1995 when he went to Sharjah to
work in a refinery. He was sent on a vessel named SUB TEC -II. After two
months, Philip's wife received an ambiguous message from the company saying
that her husband was lost in the sea and that search operations had met
with no success. Verghese now wants Kairali to find out the facts behind
Philip's apparent death.
The channel
concedes it can do little in these instances. "We cannot look into
such cases. Neither can we help all callers," says Kunjumuhammed.
"But the negligence of our embassies here is great and we have thrown
light on a serious problem." A problem for which Karaili hopes to
find a solution soon.
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