Iraq crisis: More than 40 Vizagites have lucky escape, allege agent duped them

By SNV Sudhir

Visakhapatnam, June 23, 2014: While a total of 60 belonging to various mandals of Vizag district were actually supposed to fly to Iraq, in February, only 19 have reached Al Najaf of the civil war ravaged country on Thursday.

All the 60 were kept in various lodges in Delhi by the Tanuku based agent, Medapati Venkata Krishna of West Godavari. Dream of making some good money have prompted these skilled, semi skilled and unskilled workers from Vizag to approach the agent to go to Iraq.

Most of them are welders, electricians, fitters and daily labour. Now, those who have been in Delhi pressurizing the agent to send them to work in Iraq feel they are lucky after hearing the gory tales of their colleagues who have reached Iraq last Thursday.  

They also said that the agent threatened them of not returning the passports if they don’t fly to Iraq, which actually forced the 19 to go to Al Najaf.  They all have paid around Rs 1.5 lakh to the agent for these jobs in February. They also don’t have clarity on the type of Visa they were given to enter Iraq.  Unskilled were offered pay of USD 350 to 400 and to the skilled workers around USD 750 and 800 per month.

 “We have been here since February. The agent said he will send us to Iraq, now and then. Finally he has sent some of us last Wednesday and they reached Iraq on Thursday. We have pledged gold, land and other things to pay the agent thinking that we can pay the loan back to the private lenders. But we have been paying them interest but no work since February. Now we don’t want to go to Iraq and we also want the government to help our colleagues who are there in Al Najaf,” Malla Uma Maheswar Rao of Mungapaka coming under Anakapalle, who is mow in Delhi, told this correspondent.

While they have started demanding their money back after hearing the crisis in Iraq since sometime, the agent pressurized some of them to go to Al Najaf threatening that they won’t get the passports if they don’t heed to him.

Another person from the same area, Appa Rao, who also paid money to go to Iraq said that the agent was successful in sending three such batches earlier and seeing  that they too have paid money. “We are now completely duped. The agent is nowhere to see. He changes his phone number very often. We don’t how to contact him. But we need our money back,” said Krishna.