Ghana’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Hon. Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey has been praised by Alfa Dawuda, Head of Integration NUGS Ukraine for her leadership during the crisis in Ukraine.
Global African Family Meeting
The praise came in Dawuda’s tweet in recognition of the minister’s restless campaign to get Ghanaian students caught up in the Ukraine invasion out of danger.
“Ho, Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey would wake you up with a phone call just to know the students in Summy(Ukraine City under a supposed siege)are safe,” Dawuda’s tweet read.
He goes on to call Hon. Ayorkor Botchwey “A Compassionate Leader you are.”
Indeed on Tuesday it came to light that 93 Ghanaians including three children had been stuck in Sumy City located between the Russian border to the east and Russian forces to the west.
The entire city had been encircled by Russian forces rendering the 93 Ghanaians and roughly 380 Nigerians trapped and unable to leave.
That information was forwarded to the Foreign minister. By Friday she had “been on it for four days,” DNT was told. And it appears the diplomacy had worked.
By Wednesday, the government of Russia had agreed to allow Ghanaians trapped in the Ukrainian cities of Sumy and Kharkiv safe passage.
Meanwhile before this diplomatic breakthrough can be actualized, the students are contending with blackouts and lack of water.
Most of them are living in Hostels now. And according to DNT’s contact, Hostels 4 nd 5 lost water and electricity so they “all moved, well, most of us have moved to hostel 3.”
Those leaving ahead of the Russia passage are having to pay the few drivers willing to dare a drive out of Sumy City as much as $500 just to get to Poltava, 175 kilometers south of Sumy City for onward journey to Hungary.
The most breathtaking aspect of this crisis is that Africans have banded together such that nationalities do not matter.
From Prague in the Czech Republic, Ghanaians are working with the South African Ambassador while in Budapest, Hungary, Ghanaians are working with Nigerians all to save the roughly 500 Africans trapped in Sumy City.
DNT News with correspondence reports from Kofi Nkrumah (Prague, Czech Republic), Magdalene Nonkwia (Budapest Hungary), and Erica Bempong (Sumy City, Ukraine)
…………………………………………………………
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.