Ghanaians Deported From Israel Feel The Heat

Deported workers feel the shackles of "a criminal, or a slave"

ACCRA, Ghana - Richard Lawson has neither a home nor work, and his money is running out. More or less the same can be said about Samuel Kweifio-Okai. Both men were recently deported from Israel and sent home, and both are finding it hard to return to life in their native land. For both, the daily anxiety in Israel about an impending deportation has been replaced by the daily misery of hunger and poverty.

Lawson worked in Israel for two years, Kweifio-Okai for two years and four months. They lived in Tel Aviv's Hatikvah neighborhood and worked cleaning houses in Hod Hasharon, Ramat Hasharon and Kochav Yair.

One morning in early July, Lawson left his home, and was grabbed while on his way to work. He tried to resist when handcuffs were slapped on his wrists. "In Ghana, they only use handcuffs for the most dangerous prisoners. In old times, they'd put chains on slaves they sent from Ghana to America. So what does that make me - a criminal, or a slave?"

Lawson was expelled before he had fulfilled his dream - to save enough money to build a home in Ghana. Forcibly returned to his home country, he lives in a house owned by a sister who emigrated to America. To no avail, he has for weeks been trying to find work as a carpenter.

Ghana's general situation is better than its neighbors in Africa and its official unemployment rate is "only" 20 percent - the actual figure is higher. The streets of the capital Accra filled with poor people trying to peddle odds and ends, pieces of cloth, bananas, peanuts, cooking oil.

During his months in Israel, Lawson managed to buy some modern amenities - a television, a refrigerator, and more. But he had to leave these appliances, and even clothing, behind. After he was arrested, policemen asked whether he wanted to return home to pick up his clothes, but Lawson refused.

There were fellow countrymen in his apartment at the time and they too were illegal residents, so Lawson worried that immigration officials had set a trap for him. A friend who was supposed to pack his clothes and bring them to Lawson was himself arrested. Lawson was detained in Nazareth for a month before his expulsion, and in fact he spent that time wearing the same shirt and trousers. Finally, during a stopover in Ethiopia after his expulsion, he bought a second pair of pants.

Kweifio-Okai shares Lawson's frustrations about the treatment to which Israel subjects its foreign workers before their expulsion. But he isn't bitter. Kweifio-Okai says: "There are some here who say if they ever see an Israel, they'll punch him. But I think that's just talk."

Kweifio-Okai tells fellow countrymen who are angry about the treatment they endured in Israel that its expulsion policies are an internal matter that can't be influenced by foreign workers. "I'm happy that I had the opportunity to work and send my family some money," he says.

He points to a copy of the New Testament, which he says he carries partly to bolster his forgiving Christian attitude to his expulsion. In fact, Kweifio-Okai managed to save very little money in Israel. He only worked four days a week and had to pay rent and cab fares to relatively distant work places.

Once in a while he managed to send some money to his wife, who lives in Nigeria with with 18 and 20 year old sons. He now seeks work in a church, where he was employed as a maintenance man and as a musician, before his working interlude in Israel. Yet even if he manages to find work in the church, he'll earn $50 a month.

Kweifio-Okai thought of joining his family in Nigeria, but he feared he'd have no chance of finding work there either. He lives in Accra in his parents' home - three of five siblings have emigrated to America. He says his situation isn't as bad as Ghanaians who borrowed money from their families and frieds to buy tickets to go to Israel and were then expelled after working there for only a few months.

These hapless people never earned enough money to repay the debts they incurred just to get to Israel. "They're afraid to show their faces in public," says Kweifio-Okai.

Deported, and robbed

A small crowd gathered around a radio yesterday in an Accra neighborhood to listen, on the "Radio Universe" station, to an interview with two workers who were deported from Israel. One man gave details of a common and widespread accusation.

When Israeli police arrest foreign workers before deportation, he said, they confiscate their money. When this money is later returned, large sums are frequently missing.

A group of Ghanaian workers who were deported from Israel have organized a lobby to pressure their government to take steps to ensure that this missing money is returned. (R.S.)