Vikramaditya
Port Blair, May 11: A special Chartered flight of Air India from Chennai landed Port Blair this afternoon with only cargo, which mostly contained medical supplies, the flight in returned served as Air Ambulance and evacuated six serious patients and some attendants for Mainland India.
As per details, the special chartered flight of Air India today reached Port Blair at around 12.15 PM with PPE (Kits), N95 Masks (white), Infrared Thermometer, Testing Equipments and other items in sufficient quantity and while returning back to Chennai it took 15 passengers, including six serious patients and two doctors.
According to Director of Health Services, Dr. Omkar Singh among six patients, four were heart patients and were sent for pace maker operation at Kamakshi Hospitals, while one patients with Kidney issue sent to MMM Hospital Chennai and the sixth patient is cancer patient sent to Kerala.
Meanwhile hundreds of Andaman Islanders struck at several parts of Mainland India since lock down 1.0 are still waiting for a flight back to Andaman. Many raised questioned that why the flight did not take some stranded passengers from Chennai, while flying with only cargo. Sources in Andaman Administration have however said that the proposal for bringing stranded people of Andaman, including patients, students and others to Port Blair via flight is still with the Ministry and local Administration is waiting for a reply.
Major political parties like Congress and BJP have already raised demands to bring back all stranded Islanders to Andamans as early as possible but the process is delaying for various reasons, causing problems for mostly patients, who are waiting at Chennai and Kolkata to reach Andaman.
Earlier the Andaman Administration had planned to bring back nearly 600 stranded passengers from Chennai to Andaman via ship but that plan was also dropped because of administrative reasons.
Meanwhile in a radio interview Mr. Chetan Sanghi the Chief Secretary of Andaman and Nicobar Administration recently said that the Administration planned to bring the stranded islanders from mainland in view of the lockdown that was scheduled to be lifted on May 3. “But considering the surge in the disease the lockdown had to be further extended for another two weeks and we now have to plan whether to bring back the stranded islanders during the period of lockdown or after that. We have collected the data of the stranded islanders which shows more than 1000 people which includes recovered medical cases, students” the Chief Secretary added.
Andaman Sheekha tried to reach Secretary, General Administration, Mr. Deepak Varmani to know the kind of approach made by the administration in bringing the stranded islanders back to their hometown but, he was not available for comment.
