Over 30 Nigerians are currently stranded in Dubai and are said to be sleeping in a park as the companies they worked for stopped paying their salaries.
Lack of finances has left them stranded, thus making it difficult for them to fly back to Nigeria.
This development was revealed in a Twitter post by Dubai-based journalist, Ashleigh Stewart, which has since been deleted.
She added that the stranded Nigerians don’t have access to running water even at a time that it is “peak summer in Dubai”.
Stewart accused the Nigerian Embassy of being aware of their plight, as the stranded Nigerians were previously sleeping outside the embassy but were later moved to the park after appealing for help.
According to her, most of them were working in Dubai, however, their companies refused to pay them during the pandemic, forcing them out on the streets.
“They have been appealing to the Nigerian embassy for an aid flight home but have yet to succeed. Around 70 of them were flown home last week.
“One of the women, a former housemaid, has been here for 2 weeks. She has 3 children in Nigeria and just wants to get home to them. Another man, a nutritionist, arrived in January to find work and said he had been applying for everything ‘even labourer jobs’ and couldn’t find a job,” she tweeted.
Stewart says that the Nigerians just want to return home, as was informed it would either be via sponsors, airlines, or the embassy. She, therefore, called for support to buy their tickets back to Nigeria.
Stewart later thanked concerned people that have offered to help the stranded Nigerians and said the plan is to reach the Nigerian embassy.
“They, and humanitarian groups as well as the Dubai Government, are working on getting a more formal channel to help them set up in the meantime. I’m told that everything is being done to get them home as soon as physically possible and to get them comfortable accommodation as well,” she said.
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