1,002 Nepalis brought home from six destinations

Published On: June 24, 2020 07:30 PM NPT By: Republica | @RepublicaNepal

KATHMANDU, June 24: A total of 1,002 Nepalis were brought home from six different destinations on Wednesday.

A Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) aircraft brought 255 Nepalis from Jeddah, while Turkish Airlines brought 282 Nepalis home from Istanbul. Four others arrived in Kathmandu from Malaysia in a Malaysian Airlines flight.

Similarly, three Himalaya Airlines flights from Dammam, Dubai and Kuwait carried 154, 149 including three infants and 155 passengers, respectively, on Wednesday. According to Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), a total of 14 international flights were operated on Wednesday alone. These flights carried 318 passengers out of the country.

The Nepali nationals, who were evacuated from different countries, were sent to different holding centers in Kathmandu upon their arrival at the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA). They will be later shifted to provincial and other quarantine facilities according to their preference and affordability.

Meanwhile, NAC flights from Japan and Kuwait are bringing home 403 Nepalis on Thursday. The NAC flight from Kuwait is scheduled to bring home 149 passengers and another flight from Narita will bring home 254 other Nepali nationals. Thirteen different international repatriation flights will be operated on Thursday.

All the passengers are required to produce a RDT or a PCR test report before boarding the planes. And after arriving in Nepal, they should stay in quarantine as per the government’s guideline.

Nepal had suspended both domestic and international flights to and from the country since the beginning of the lockdown. The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) has allowed limited flights to some specific sectors based on safety assessment to operate as it plans to gradually increase flight schedules based on the evaluation of the situation.

The Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA) has scheduled the repatriation flights with an aim of evacuating thousands of vulnerable Nepalis stranded in different countries. The government started evacuating vulnerable Nepali citizens from abroad from June 11 and will continue the operation till June 30.