VietNamNet Bridge - The remaining 1,121 Vietnamese workers who left Libya’s Benghazi Port on March 3 will arrive in the northern port city of Hai Phong in the next three or four days.

 

Le Van Thanh, Vice chief of the Department for Management of Overseas Labor said that the ship was previously expected to land in Hai Phong on March 21, but bad weather and numerous stops at different ports for fuel and food had prolonged the journey.

 

Thanh said the ship left the Singaporean port on March 30 afternoon and it was heading toward Malaysia’s sea territory and if everything went right, it would arrive in three to four days.

 

According to Thanh, this was the first passenger ship to follow this route and it normally took cargo vessels 15 days to travel from Benghazi to Hai Phong.

Timelines of the rescue of Vietnamese workers from Libya 

January 15: Benghazi city in Libya was shaken by the demonstration of thousands of people against the government led by Colonel Muammar Qaddafi since 1969. There were around 10,400 Vietnamese working at construction sites in Libya at the time.

February 18: Dozens of demonstrators in Benghazi, the second largest state in Libya, were shot dead. Vietnam stopped sending workers to Libya. Labor exporting firms were told to keep an eye on the situation in Libya and to ask Vietnamese workers to avoid public sites.

February 24: Many countries began to evacuate their citizens from Libya. Vietnamese Ambassador to Libya Dao Duy Tien said that some Vietnamese workers were evacuated from Libya by land, air and water by their Korean, Brazilian, Turkish employers.

The Vietnamese government established a steering board to assist Vietnamese in the Middle East and North Africa. The board, led by Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Khiem, was in charge of evacuating Vietnamese from Libya and bringing them home.

February 25: 2,000 Vietnamese workers were evacuated from Libya to Egypt, Turkey, Malta and Tunisia. Around 2,500 were on the way to the border of Libya.

Vietnam asked the IOM to assist Vietnamese workers in Libya.

February 26: Around 4,600 Vietnamese workers were brought to the neighboring countries of Libya and nearly 4,000 others were on the way to the border.

The same day, the first aircraft of Vietnam Airlines left Hanoi with 8 tons of food, clothes and medicine to Egypt to help Vietnamese citizens.

March 1: The aircraft returned to Hanoi with 318 Vietnamese workers. The same days, flights of other airlines also carried Vietnamese workers from Libya to Hanoi, raising the total number to 1,450.

March 2: More than 6,000 Vietnamese left Libya to third countries. Around 2,800 arrived home safely while 3,000 were on their way to the border. Around 300 were still trapped in Libya. 

March 3: 8,250 Vietnamese were evacuated from Libya to other countries, 2,740 of them returned home safely. The remaining workers were in five neighboring countries of Libya were on the way home by waterway. In addition, there were nearly 300 others trapped in Libya.

March 6: All 10,334 Vietnamese workers were evacuated from Libya, 7,000 of them returned home.

March 9: The last flight brought 209 workers from Libya back home, closing the rescue campaign. The last 1,000 workers will arrive at the northern port of Hai Phong in 3-4 days.

PV