Lambirds Students: ‘We Are Trapped Here’

Frustration Levels Rising, They Say.

Last Thursday, the former Lambirds Academy students spoke to The VOICE, voicing their displeasure at what they believe to be bureaucratic impediments here preventing them from returning to their homeland.

Selisha Chhetri said that she and her colleagues want to return home because many of their families are not in a good situation, especially after the devastating earthquake that rattled Nepal last April.

She said despite those challenges, many parents have to be sending huge amounts of money for their general upkeep although the Saint Lucian government is paying for the former students’ living accommodations.

“We’ve been trapped on this island and remain here like lost souls: without money, jobs and identity,” Chhetri said. “We don’t even have our passports. So the students want to go back home.”

Chhetri said the government officials who visit them once a week do very little to update them on the progress of the court case brought against Lambirds Academy’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr.Iftekhar Ahmed Shams, and his three co-defendants.

“All we know is that the case has been postponed over 40 times. So we are all very depressed and really want to go back home as quickly as possible. Whenever the government officials come by, all they tell us is that we need to go to court to give evidence and only after that we will be able to go home,” Chhetri explained.

However, that long wait that appears to be the central factor to the former students’ displeasure. According to Chhetri, the court adjournments, coupled with the former students being required to give evidence in court by ones and twos, might result in them being stranded in Saint Lucia for years.

Describing their ordeal as “a very bad situation”, Chhetri said the legal process would work better if local authorities would take all of the required statements simultaneously and allow them to return home.

“We don’t really want our money back right now; we just want to go home,” Chhetri said. “Obviously, we will need our money that we paid to Lambirds Academy back, but for now we want to go back home.”

Another Nepalese national, AbineshBikramBista, said he has made at least two attempts in the past year to return home, only to have bureaucratic red tape thwart such plans. He said he bought a plane ticket to Nepal in March of last year but government officials here did not allow him to leave, resulting in the US$1500 he paid for the ticket going down the drain. The very same thing happened last November, he said.

Bista said 18 members of the group, who are currently being housed at a guest house in the city, are willing to stay in Saint Lucia to assist with the case despite having critical situations to attend to back in Nepal. However, he wants to see the court case progress smoothly. He said a court hearing originally scheduled for earlier this week has now been postponed to March 9.

“We’ve been going to court on many occasions telling the same stories to the same people who keep asking us the same questions,” Bista lamented. “We don’t think this is reliable and I don’t think that justice can be given properly.”

Bista said that while leaving Nepal was due to exploring educational and financial opportunities abroad, their bout of homesickness is too much to bear and is also causing discomfort to his family back home.

“We didn’t come here to sit idle doing nothing. If we wanted to do that, Nepal was the best place to do that,” Bista, who was among the first batch of Lambirds Academy students, explained. “But I came here to get an education so that I could be able to support my family. I’m not getting the chance at that education and my family now has to support me. This is useless.”

The VOICE also spoke to two other former Lambirds Academy students who said they were among a group of six scheduled to leave Saint Lucia for Nepal on January 28 this year. Before they booked their plane tickets, they said, they had gotten confirmation from government officials that they were free to leave Saint Lucia providing they brought in their confirmed tickets two weeks prior.

The VOICE was told that only three of the former students were able to leave Saint Lucia while the others were told at the airport by immigration authorities that their passports could not be found. The two students said they were both disappointed and frustrated because they had previously been told by officials from the Ministry of Home Affairs that their passports would be at the airport when they got there. As a result, they also lost the money they spent to purchase their tickets.

Krishna Sapkota is one of the three Nepalese nationals who said he was unable to travel back home on January 28 due to the bureaucratic mix-up. He said he paid US$1400 for his plane ticket, hoping to return home to see his mother who is currently in hospital and had an operation on January 10.

“I provided all those documents to the ministry and they told me to confirm the ticket and that I will get my passport,” Sapkota said. “But I’ve just been sent round and round to different government departments. My family had already started making plans to meet me at the airport in Nepal. So I had to call and tell them to cancel those plans.”

Over 60 nationals from Nepal, India and The Philippines suffered from the fallout following a police raid at Lambirds Academy on February 28 last year. Many of them claimed they were lured to Saint Lucia to pursue educational courses at Lambirds Academy but found out that the institution did not offer what it advertised online.

Dr. Shams and his co-defendants were later charged with money laundering and human trafficking. However, the money laundering charge was subsequently dismissed.

The VOICE made several attempts to contact the Ministry of Home Affairs yesterday. However, getting a comment from that ministry proved unsuccessful.