12 November 2016, Dubai, UAE – If you are a migrate worker in this part of the world and travelling to your home country you may find this news as disturbing but time can’t be changed. That is her fate to be, and her time was till date. According to the national news service khaleej times here in Dubai, A young woman airline passenger has died in Dubai on her way from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to her hometown Entebbe in Central Uganda via Dubai International Airport. Her body has been lying in the hospital morgue for about two weeks.
Twenty three years old Zaina Nagani boarded a Flydubai flight from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to her home town in Central Uganda and just before boarding a Flydubai flight she had to be rushed to Dubai Hospital where she was declared dead.
Responding to news reporter’s query about the death of a Ugandan national in Dubai, an embassy official from Abu Dhabi confirmed the incident. However, the official clarified that she did not die in Airport Terminal 2 aboard a flight but in the Dubai hospital.
“Your inquiry about the late Nagani has been received. That lady died in Dubai Hospital and not in Dubai Airport. She had been admitted a few days before her death after FlyDubai, the airline on which she was travelling from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to Entebbe, Uganda realized that she was too ill to continue with her journey upon reaching Dubai,” an official from the Ugandan embassy in Abu Dhabi said in a statement.
“She therefore died in hospital. Her body is not yet repatriated to Uganda because her family is not able to pay the costs and the Saudi employer is not ready to meet the cost,” the statement added.
The 23-year-old Ugandan woman Zaina Nagani reportedly fell sick at the Dubai International Airport on Thursday and planned to take a flight home.
Some reports suggested that she was discharged from a hospital in the first week of October.
The deceased had been working as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia for two years.
Her parents Have been quoted as saying that their daughter had gone to a hospital for a heart related problem. According to her passport details Nagani was born in Namataala, village in Mbale district of the Republic of Uganda.
Chief of Protocol the Ugandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been quoted as saying that the government is aware of the death of a national in Dubai and that efforts were on to trace the the Ugandan labor export company that sent her to Saudi Arabia for repatriating the body.
She was also reportedly suffering from ovarian cancer, according to reports quoting a medical discharge certificate dated October 7, 2016.
The Embassy of the Republic of Uganda Abu Dhabi has denied reports stating that the woman collapsed and died aboard a flight in Terminal 2 of Dubai International Airport. In the absence of a proper travel insurance, who will bear the cost of treatment and dead body repatriation is the complex issue, especially when the Saudi employer has refused to pay for the body repatriation.
The family of the deceased is unable to pay for the body repatriation and has sought support from the government of her home country to support the body repatriation.
