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Alarming situation. oh my goodness. Indian businesses getting closed in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar
The government of India is putting final touches to a plan to evacuate over 500,000 Indians stuck in the six Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) countries in West Asia. Several of them, who include senior citizens, pregnant women and children, were stranded in the six Arab oil monarchies of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar that make up the GCC when India announced its national lockdown on March 24. Several of the GCC countries have already implemented lockdowns of their own to combat the spread of COVID-19.
The phased evacuation of close to half a million Indians could be the world’s largest evacuation of civilian nationals. It would certainly dwarf the 1990 airlift when Air India aircraft flew 160,000 Indian nationals out of Iraq-occupied Kuwait prior to the first Gulf War. This time around, the government plans to deploy a combination of Indian Air Force transport aircraft, warships of the Indian Navy and Air India airliners to bring its nationals back. As was the case then, a vast majority of the stranded persons are from a single state—Kerala. By the evening of April 29, 320,000 persons from the GCC countries had registered on a portal (www.registernorkaroots.org) set up by the Kerala government’s Non-Resident Keralites Affairs department. “We are working out the logistics for handling the situation. The state government has drawn up a plan to quarantine them. We welcome them back,” a senior Kerala official said.
Among the returnees are 220,000 persons with valid job visas—several of them asked to avail their annual vacation by employers as the Gulf monarchies deal with the pandemic. There are also 57,436 tourists, 20,219 dependents and 7,276 students in foreign universities who have registered for their return to the state. K.V. Abdul Khader, general secretary of the Kerala Pravasi Sangam, an organisation of overseas residents from Kerala, says he gets over a hundred calls a day asking for help. “Most calls are for medicines which we are dispatching to the Gulf countries or sourcing them from there itself through our network,” he says.
The three-term Communist Party of India (CPI) legislator from Guruvayoor added that some 6,000 Malayalees are stranded in the Maldives alone. “Most of them are teachers or healthcare workers. There aren’t much medical facilities for migrants in the island and all they want is to return to Kerala.”
A state government official says the first preference will be given to pregnant women, senior citizens and children—around 30,000 people from the state.
There are over 2.5 million Non-Resident Keralites (NRKs) employed in the GCC countries. A January 2020 study said NRKs remitted an estimated Rs 85,092 crore in 2018. This figure is nearly 11 per cent of Kerala’s entire Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) for the year and over 35 per cent of the state’s income. The remittance economy has propped up a consumerist boom in the state and a per capita income above the national average.
A political controversy has erupted in the state over the alleged delay in evacuation of members of the Malayalee diaspora. The opposition Congress has accused Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and the Union government of not doing enough to bring them back. Former state chief minister and AICC (All India Congress Committee) general secretary Oommen Chandy and state Congress president Mullappally Ramachandran have called upon the Pinarayi government and the Centre to take immediate steps, including sending special flights, to get the NRIs home. Youth Congress leaders staged protests at the Kochi international airport on April 27 to express solidarity with the migrant Malayalee population.
The BJP, which has considerable following among NRI families in Kerala, maintains that it is raising the issue prominently in Delhi. “We have apprised the [party’s] central leaders and Union minister of state for external affairs V. Muraleedharan of the worsening situation in the Gulf. He is trying his best for an early evacuation. Any delay in this certainly damages us politically,” a senior state BJP leader told INDIA TODAY.
But the political one-upmanship masks the reality—no one really wants the Gulf workers to return in a state where unemployment is rife. Kerala already has over 3.6 million unemployed youth. Its unemployment rate of 9.1 per cent is way higher than the national average of 6.1 per cent.
Of those who want to return, 56,114 persons had lost their jobs to the COVID-19 economic shakedown in the Gulf and are returning permanently to Kerala. Among them, 49,472 are skilled labourers and 67,136 are professionals.
Pinarayi has all along maintained that his Left Democratic Front government is ready to receive the overseas Malayalees with open arms. “We have informed the prime minister and the Union home minister that we are ready to welcome all our people home. We have set up facilities to offer them the best medical care, including quarantine facilities, and assistance on their arrival. We are waiting for the central government’s decision,” Pinarayi told INDIA TODAY.
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Professor Irudaya Rajan of the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, has dire predictions about the reverse migration. “Such en masse return of migrants will harm the state economically and may trigger social discontent. Kerala needs a comprehensive strategy to deal with this crisis,” he said.
For now, the Pinarayi government has drawn up a priority list for the impending evacuation—pregnant women, senior citizens, children, persons who need emergency medical help, students, people released after serving prison terms and tourists whose travel visas have expired. The chief minister has been reviewing the arrangements in place for medical assistance to the returnees, including quarantining them, and has directed the health department to identify hospitals and care centres that can be converted into COVID specialty facilities.
https://www.indiatoday.in/india-tod...nris-long-wait-to-get-home-1672605-2020-04-29
The chief minister has effectively reached out to the Malayalee diaspora and channelised their involvement in the state’s development. In 2018, he convened a two-day Global Kerala Assembly in Thiruvananthapuram, attended by several NRIs, to seek their assistance in the state’s welfare. He also tapped NRI platforms for help when two consecutive floods ravaged Kerala. All eyes will now be on him on when, and how, he can get the stranded NRIs back to their home state. What happens to them when they get back is a battle for another day.
ALSO READ | Jagan Reddy steps up vigil and testing | India Today Insight
The government of India is putting final touches to a plan to evacuate over 500,000 Indians stuck in the six Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) countries in West Asia. Several of them, who include senior citizens, pregnant women and children, were stranded in the six Arab oil monarchies of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar that make up the GCC when India announced its national lockdown on March 24. Several of the GCC countries have already implemented lockdowns of their own to combat the spread of COVID-19.
The phased evacuation of close to half a million Indians could be the world’s largest evacuation of civilian nationals. It would certainly dwarf the 1990 airlift when Air India aircraft flew 160,000 Indian nationals out of Iraq-occupied Kuwait prior to the first Gulf War. This time around, the government plans to deploy a combination of Indian Air Force transport aircraft, warships of the Indian Navy and Air India airliners to bring its nationals back. As was the case then, a vast majority of the stranded persons are from a single state—Kerala. By the evening of April 29, 320,000 persons from the GCC countries had registered on a portal (www.registernorkaroots.org) set up by the Kerala government’s Non-Resident Keralites Affairs department. “We are working out the logistics for handling the situation. The state government has drawn up a plan to quarantine them. We welcome them back,” a senior Kerala official said.
Among the returnees are 220,000 persons with valid job visas—several of them asked to avail their annual vacation by employers as the Gulf monarchies deal with the pandemic. There are also 57,436 tourists, 20,219 dependents and 7,276 students in foreign universities who have registered for their return to the state. K.V. Abdul Khader, general secretary of the Kerala Pravasi Sangam, an organisation of overseas residents from Kerala, says he gets over a hundred calls a day asking for help. “Most calls are for medicines which we are dispatching to the Gulf countries or sourcing them from there itself through our network,” he says.
The three-term Communist Party of India (CPI) legislator from Guruvayoor added that some 6,000 Malayalees are stranded in the Maldives alone. “Most of them are teachers or healthcare workers. There aren’t much medical facilities for migrants in the island and all they want is to return to Kerala.”
A state government official says the first preference will be given to pregnant women, senior citizens and children—around 30,000 people from the state.
There are over 2.5 million Non-Resident Keralites (NRKs) employed in the GCC countries. A January 2020 study said NRKs remitted an estimated Rs 85,092 crore in 2018. This figure is nearly 11 per cent of Kerala’s entire Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) for the year and over 35 per cent of the state’s income. The remittance economy has propped up a consumerist boom in the state and a per capita income above the national average.
A political controversy has erupted in the state over the alleged delay in evacuation of members of the Malayalee diaspora. The opposition Congress has accused Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and the Union government of not doing enough to bring them back. Former state chief minister and AICC (All India Congress Committee) general secretary Oommen Chandy and state Congress president Mullappally Ramachandran have called upon the Pinarayi government and the Centre to take immediate steps, including sending special flights, to get the NRIs home. Youth Congress leaders staged protests at the Kochi international airport on April 27 to express solidarity with the migrant Malayalee population.
The BJP, which has considerable following among NRI families in Kerala, maintains that it is raising the issue prominently in Delhi. “We have apprised the [party’s] central leaders and Union minister of state for external affairs V. Muraleedharan of the worsening situation in the Gulf. He is trying his best for an early evacuation. Any delay in this certainly damages us politically,” a senior state BJP leader told INDIA TODAY.
But the political one-upmanship masks the reality—no one really wants the Gulf workers to return in a state where unemployment is rife. Kerala already has over 3.6 million unemployed youth. Its unemployment rate of 9.1 per cent is way higher than the national average of 6.1 per cent.
Of those who want to return, 56,114 persons had lost their jobs to the COVID-19 economic shakedown in the Gulf and are returning permanently to Kerala. Among them, 49,472 are skilled labourers and 67,136 are professionals.
Pinarayi has all along maintained that his Left Democratic Front government is ready to receive the overseas Malayalees with open arms. “We have informed the prime minister and the Union home minister that we are ready to welcome all our people home. We have set up facilities to offer them the best medical care, including quarantine facilities, and assistance on their arrival. We are waiting for the central government’s decision,” Pinarayi told INDIA TODAY.
advertisement
Professor Irudaya Rajan of the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, has dire predictions about the reverse migration. “Such en masse return of migrants will harm the state economically and may trigger social discontent. Kerala needs a comprehensive strategy to deal with this crisis,” he said.
For now, the Pinarayi government has drawn up a priority list for the impending evacuation—pregnant women, senior citizens, children, persons who need emergency medical help, students, people released after serving prison terms and tourists whose travel visas have expired. The chief minister has been reviewing the arrangements in place for medical assistance to the returnees, including quarantining them, and has directed the health department to identify hospitals and care centres that can be converted into COVID specialty facilities.
https://www.indiatoday.in/india-tod...nris-long-wait-to-get-home-1672605-2020-04-29
The chief minister has effectively reached out to the Malayalee diaspora and channelised their involvement in the state’s development. In 2018, he convened a two-day Global Kerala Assembly in Thiruvananthapuram, attended by several NRIs, to seek their assistance in the state’s welfare. He also tapped NRI platforms for help when two consecutive floods ravaged Kerala. All eyes will now be on him on when, and how, he can get the stranded NRIs back to their home state. What happens to them when they get back is a battle for another day.
ALSO READ | Jagan Reddy steps up vigil and testing | India Today Insight
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. Arabs kick half a million Indian out....while Indians in India are singing Arab bhai-bhai songs on social media. 
