Sharjah: A government hospital is refusing to issue a birth certificate to a baby until the parents of the little girl clear the hospital bill.
The six-month-old baby, Al Batoul Mariam, is still without identification as Al Qasimi Hospital in Sharjah will not release her documents because the parents failed to pay Dh3,000 in hospital bills.
Al Batoul Mariam's Algerian mother gave birth to her at Al Qasimi Hospital in October, but due to their poor financial situation, the parents failed to pay the delivery costs.
Al Batoul Mariam is their first child.
Al Batoul Mariam's mother, also called Mariam, told Gulf News that she was asked to pay Dh3,000, which she could not do.
"I was asked to leave the hospital and they refused to issue [a] birth certificate for my baby," the mother said.
Mariam said her daughter is now an illegal resident in the UAE as no passport was issued for her by the Algerian consulate or embassy.
"We contacted our embassy and consulate to issue a passport for my baby, but they said we have to provide them with the birth certificate from the hospital," the mother said.
"The hospital [would] call us to pay the money back," she said. "Neither my husband nor myself work."
Mariam, who used to work at Algeria's Ministry of Education while her husband was a lecturer at the Fine Arts University there, said they were cheated by one of their compatriots who told them to come to the UAE and realise all their dreams.
"Those people issued us visas to come here after they charged us a huge amount of money," she said.
She said they came here one-and-a-half years ago.
"We came to Dubai airport and no one was waiting for us," she said. "We stayed two days at the airport till we got help from Dubai Police's Human Rights official who helped us to go to Sharjah and he found us a place to stay."
The woman said the police official tried to find the people who had brought them to the UAE but he found out that they had left the country.
"We have no clue about the rules and regulations here and that we needed a sponsor in order to stay legally," she said, adding that they thought the situation was like Europe where they could work and stay.
"We were helped by some people to whom we paid Dh8,000 in order to issue us [a] visa," she said. "That was all our money."
She said her husband was not able to find work.
"We rented an apartment in Sharjah by depositing my husband's passport," she said. "The owner [will hold] his passport until we pay the rent."
Mariam said she and her husband are stuck here.
"We want to go back to our country. We have no idea what to do. Some people are offering us food and temporary shelter."
An official at Al Qasimi Hospital said: "The family said they cannot deposit their passports and they had no IDs with them like driving licence or health card to keep as a guarantee. We told them they can collect the certificate when they pay the bill."
