Thousands of Indian visitors were left stranded when South Africa declared a national lockdown and have been slowly making their way home, with the latest batch having left on Saturday. LockdownSA CoronavirusPandemic Covid19inSA
When South Africa declared one of the toughest lockdowns to flatten the deadly coronavirus curve, now a runaway catastrophic scenario with 3 000 deaths and 187 000 casualties, shutting down all transport hubs and restricting travelling, thousands of Indian nationals – ranging from elderly and sickly people visiting their economic migrant families to students, entrepreneurs and tourists, were stranded in the draconian Covid-19 curfew.
More than 50 Indians are still stranded in SA and attempts are underway to repatriate them this month.
The Indian High Commissioner Jaideep Sarkar and his consul-general in Johannesburg, Anju Rangan, have been coordinating all the repatriation flights. The consular office in Parktown is the assembly point for processing all returning Indians before they were bused to the landmark airport on the East Rand.
Later, her first chartered flight was cancelled and she could board the second flight because she fell ill and could not travel. ‘’Then there were the seven students who had been to CapeTown and Durban to learn diving tactics in the seas. They were all relieved to board the mercy flight. As the gleaming Ethiopian Airlines jetliner stood on the tarmac at the Johannesburg airport, a total of 183 passengers had their temperatures tested and passports processed by health and home affairs officials.
She arrived early this year to take up her new diplomatic posting directly from Scotland weeks before the lockdown was imposed and has her work cut out, handling the flurry of requests from her nationals to return to India.
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