Guwahati:
Assam Chief Secretary Kumar Sanjay Krishna today announced that four repatriation flights will land in Guwahati between May 27 to June 5. These international flights are from Ukraine, Moscow in Russia, Philippines, and Kuwait.
The government's nod to allow these repatriation flights to bring back Indians stuck in foreign land will serve as a balm to the ailing airlines sector, which has mostly been closed down ever since the lockdown was announced by the Centre to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus and has suffered losses in the crores.
It is pertinent to mention here that today, the Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International (LGBI) airport in Guwahati, which resumed operations yesterday, handled 10 flights in total. Three of the flights arrived from Delhi and two arrived from Imphal and Bangalore, while one each arrived from Chennai, Silchar, and Mumbai.
Meanwhile, Assam Finance and Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has announced that at least 1 lakh person have returned back to Assam following the easing of the lockdown restrictions, and a further 1 lakh is in transit and expected to reach soon. "The numbers will dwindle and industries are opening in other states and many of these people are being discouraged as they have to head for quarantine after returning", Sarma told mediapersons in Guwahati earlier today.
This announcement has been made at a time when the global travel has been severely restricted owing to the rampant spread of the Covid-19 pandemic which is sweeping across the world at an unprecedented pace. Worldometers reports that 5,617,251 people across the world have been infected with the coronavirus and 348,533 have died from the respiratory illness.