KUALA LUMPUR, July 29 — The family of Malaysian citizen Siti Nur Ismawida Ismail, 30, who was reported killed in an earthquake in Lombok today has yet to receive any confirmation on the incident.
Her father, Ismail Abdul Raffar, 62, said as at 6 pm today, no one from the Foreign Ministry or the Malaysian Embassy in Jakarta had contacted him or other family members to inform the matter.
As such, he hoped that the government could bring him or Siti Nur Ismawida’s husband to Lombok to identify the body.
“ I only knew about it when I watched the noon news on television. I hope the government can assist us to facilitate identification of the body (said to be that of Siti Nur Ismawida).
“If it is my daughter, I hope the relevant authorities can help expedite the process of bringing back the remains to Malaysia,” he told Bernama when met at one of his children’s house in Taman Sungai Besi Indah, Seri Kembangan near here today.
Ismail, however, claimed he had received telephone calls, believed from agents wanting to handle the process of bringing back his daughter’s remains to Malaysia.
“Some of them have asked for more than 80 million Rupiah (RM22,500) for that,” he said.
He said Siti Nur Ismawida, the third of three siblings, was a lecturer at a private college in Ampang, and loved mountain climbing.
She was among a group of 18 Malaysians who went to climb Mount Rinjani. The last time she contacted the family was last night, through Whatsapp.
Siti Nur Ismawida was reported killed from falling debris when the house she was staying collapsed.
The group arrived in Lombok last Tuesday and was scheduled to return home today.
The quake, measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale rocked Nusa Tenggara Barat and Lombok.
According to the Indonesian Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), the earthquake occurred at 5.47 am with its epicentre 28km northeast of Lombok at a depth of about 10km.
As a 2 pm today, the Indonesian authorities confirmed that 10 people were killed and 40 others injured in the quake. — Bernama
