"Many Acehnese families are worried and concerned over the Indonesian students in Egypt and, hopefully the process can be accelerated," said the Secretary General of the Association of Scholars Dayah Aceh (HUDA), Tgk Faisal Ali, here, Saturday.
The presence of Acehnese in Egypt is considered as "fighters" who are studying abroad for Aceh future progress, he said.
"These students deserve a serious attention from the Acehnese municipals, especially because the condition is quite alarming as the political and security crisis have hit Egypt," he added.
An Acehnese student in Egypt Azmi Abubakar said in his email that the country`s security situation was heating up on Friday (4 / 2).
Economic crisis has also begun to rise as the turmoil has caused food scarcity especially among students including those from Acehnese.
"Students logistics is feared to decrease. We also must increase our awareness due to thefts and looting. We also having trouble in having cash money because most of the ATM is no longer functioning," he said.
"We urge the Government of Aceh to seriously address this problem by taking specific policy because Egypt is no longer safe," Azmi Abubakar said.
According to the Middle East Alumni Association (IKAT) responsive post spokesman Tgk Tamlicha, Aceh residents and students were disappointed on the slow evacuation process undertaken by the Government.
"The evacuation process of Indonesian students and communities is rather slow compared to other countries like Malaysia which has returned all of its nationals reaching 11,000 people," Tamlicha said citing reports from Aceh university students in Cairo.
About 1.5 month is needed to evacuate around 6.000 Indonesians from Egypt, if the daily evacuation can only send home 400 people, Tamlicha said.
Local governments should play a greater role to help accelerate the evacuation process of Indonesian students from Egypt, especially because the current situation is increasingly uncertain, Tamlicha said.(*)
Editor: Ruslan Burhani
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
