Vijayawada: 145 migrants return from Kuwait

Vijayawada: The migrant workers belonging to Andhra Pradesh arrived in a special flight directly to Vijayawada on Thursday from Kuwait under Kuwait Amnesty Programme.

State COVID-19 Nodal Team's district reception teams and airport authority have made necessary arrangements at the airport to receive these incoming migrant workers including 145 women and one infant stranded in Kuwait shelters for weeks. After conducting necessary medical tests, they were sent to mandatory institutional quarantine for 14 days.

All the procedures in the airport were completed by following the COVID-19 guidelines.

All the passengers were properly tested for COVID-19 symptoms and social distancing was ensured at every counter like the reception, waiting area, data collection, immigration and customs.

After the procedures and formalities completed, the passengers were moved to IIIT campus in Nuzvid, the Government free quarantine centre.

For movement of these passengers, eight special buses of the APSRTC have been arranged by the district administration. Another flight would arrive here from Kuwait on Friday carrying 151 passengers under Amnesty.

Venkat S Medapati, president of the AP Non-Resident Telugu Society, said in a statement here on Thursday that the second phase of flights started arriving in Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam and Chennai carrying migrants from Kuwait under Amnesty from June 3.

As many as 1,900 AP migrants, who registered with the embassy for availing amnesty are being brought back from Kuwait in 11 flights arranged by the Government of Kuwait. With this, evacuation of all AP migrants, who registered under Kuwait Amnesty will be complete, he said.

It may be recalled that one flight arrived at Vijayawada on Wednesday with 114 migrants and another arrived at Visakhapatnam with 117 migrants. All the migrants have been transported to their respective district headquarters for institutional quarantine.

In all, two flights carrying 295 migrants arrived at Vijayawada on May 20 and 21 which make approximately a total of 2,200 migrants from AP returned under Kuwait Amnesty programme.