Desperate for a job, Tuticorin nurse wants to go abroad

After surviving the fierce battle between Sunni Islamic militants and the security forces in Iraq, Lesima Jerose Monisha, the nurse from Tuticorin who was airlifted last week, finds herself jobless back home.

“I’m not deterred from going abroad again to reduce the burden of debt,” she says.

Monisha, 25, has written to the Chief Minister’s cell for a government job. “While the Kerala government has promised the nurses of the State jobs and loan waivers, the Tamil Nadu government is non-committal,” she says.

Ms. Monisha, who got a nursing degree in 2011 from a private college in Bangalore, lost her father Placy Lopez, a civil engineer, when she was six. “Since then, my mother P. Edvijammal worked as a casual labourer to raise us. My mother stopped working only after I took up a job in Iraq. Now, we are finding it hard,” says Ms. Monisha, the breadwinner of the family.

Before going to Iraq, she worked in a New Delhi hospital for nine months and then took up a job at Salem for a year. If there is no response from State government, she is eyeing the United Kingdom and Canada.

“Unlike Iraq, these countries have safe working conditions and employ Indian nurses in more numbers for patient care services,” she says.

Many of her seniors have been working abroad after clearing the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). She took to nursing after the death of her cousin L. Vinoth, 28, due to kidney failure.