As thousands of Indians are still stranded in the UAE due to lack of enough flights operated under the “Vande Bharat Mission,” more and more community groups are coming forward to help their countrymen facing difficulties due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic.
The groups have been operating chartered flights to repatriate them as soon as possible.
Latest addition to the self-motivated community groups is the Purwanchal Pravasi Milan (PPM) — a UAE based group of NRIs from Bihar and UP, two of the most populated states in India.
Ravi Shankar Chand, a resident of Bihar who has been associated with the group, said that a large number of blue-collar workers in the UAE hail from Bihar, UP and Rajasthan, but there were very few flights to these destinations under the “Vande Bharat Mission,” a government of India initiative to repatriate stranded Indians.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has paralysed the world economy. Thousands of skilled and unskilled labourers have lost job in the UAE as well. We took this opportunity to fulfill our community responsibility and provided food and shelter to jobless labourers who hailed from Bihar. Soon, we realised that this was not enough as the number of flights operated under the Government of India’s “Vande Bharat Mission” were not enough,” said Chand.