Returning home in a coffin
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
Dubai, July 31: After working in the UAE for 14 long years, 48-year-old Sri Lankan housemaid Kumre Gadara Padmavathi finally returned to her motherland on Sunday. Her kin, who received her yesterday, were heartbroken and shell shocked, because Padmavathi went back to her country in a coffin.
Padmavathi’s shattered 29-year-old daughter, husband and elder sister, could not believe she had come back home dead. Her maudlin sister, Kumbugadi Nilandi, told from Sri Lanka: “We were waiting for her to return as she had spent many years away from the family. But we did not expect her to return in a coffin.”
The Sri Lankan woman, who was working as a housemaid in Fujairah, had died of cardic arrest in the emirate on December 20 last year, according to hospital officials. She was found dead by the police and they had taken her body to the Dibba Hospital.
Her body had been lying in the mortuary since December as the consulate was unaware of the death till January-end, after which, they tried to contact the family. However, after nerve-racking efforts to track down her family and her sponsor, the Sri Lankan Consulate finally managed to repatriate her body.
Like many Sri Lankan women, Padmavathi had come to the UAE -in 1993- with the dream of supporting her poverty-stricken family back home. Though she was in constant telephonic contact with her family and was sending money regularly, she had not visited them ever since she came to the UAE.
Nilandi, her sister, added: “Padmavathi’s 29-year-old daughter is yet to recover from the shock. We didn’t hear from her since December last and were a little worried. But that was not much cause for alarm for us as even earlier, she had not contacted us for long periods of time. She was the only breadwinner of our family.”
The Sri Lankan Consul General, Wasantha Senanayake, told: “We were not aware of her death until a fellow Sri Lankan accidentally learnt that the body of a Sri Lankan housemaid was lying in the mortuary. Neither her passport nor her visa had been renewed since 1995 and that made it very difficult for us to track her family. The Sri Lankan authorities placed an advertisement in Colombo and then the family got in touch with us only two months ago. We were unable to reach the sponsor.”
The consulate, however, has assured that they would try and recover all the salary arrears of the maid from the sponsor and if necessary, resort to legal action to do so.
It may be noted that for the repatriation of a body, the documents required are a confirmation from the sponsor, a death certificate from the hospital and the police clearance.
An official from Dibba Hospital said the Sri Lankan Consulate had earlier taken the body to Dubai for embalmment and then repatriation. “Padmavathi expired on December 20 and since there were no relatives to claim her body, we had to keep it in the mortuary for so long. The Dibba Police brought her body to the mortuary,” the official said.
When contacted, Fujairah Police said they did not have any clear information about her death since no police case was filed in this case.
--Agencies
The Siasat Daily, 2004.
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