At least 45 Kenyans who were stranded in the streets of Beirut have received air tickets to fly home after local authorities processed their emergency travel documents.
Kenya’s consulate in Beirut said on Friday that the group is part of the 75 which Lebanese Immigration officials have granted permission to leave the country even though they don’t have their passports.
Kassem Jaber, the assistant consul-general, told the Nation that the Kenyans will be travelling home from Saturday.
“The consulate with the cooperation of the Immigration department was able to clear 75 names of Kenyans who are no longer with their sponsors,” Jaber said, referring to the Lebanese controversial system of bonding domestic workers, known as the Kafala.
Officials at the consulate were criticised over how they responded to pleas of Kenyans stranded in Lebanon following the deadly explosion earlier this month that killed over 135 people and displaced some 300,000 others.
The consulate, which is run by Lebanese nationals, was accused of ignoring the pleas of Kenyan women who gathered outside the office to asking for evacuation.
The challenges of the Kenyans was raised by the International Human Rights Commission, a charity in Beirut.
Mr Romanos Raad, a representative of IHRC told the Nation that some of the women who camped outside the consulate for days had babies and one was pregnant.
“If they don’t have passports, it doesn’t mean they should be on the streets. The consulate should provide them with emergency travel documents,” Raad said.
The protests by the women turned ugly last weekend after one of their leaders only identified as Eunice was arrested and detained for posting a video of their situation on Facebook.
Jaber told the Nation that the protesters had initially refused to cooperate and that some of them had court cases or had babies without documentation of their births.
Kenya’s Ambassador to Kuwait, which is accredited to Lebanon, said earlier the women were mostly stranded because the Lebanese airspace had been shut and a state of emergency imposed on the capital Beirut.
But the embassy also blamed the women for reportedly impeding service at the office. Ms Halima Mohamud, the ambassador, had claimed some non-governmental organisations had assisted the women with temporary shelter.
But images shared on social media showed small tents erected outside the consulate as the women perched on pavements.
