A group of Non-Resident Keralites (NRKs) who reached the city on Thursday staged a protest near the Kozhikode mofussil bus stand, alleging that they were not given proper quarantine facilities with government support.
The passengers, including three women, who reached the Kozhikode international airport by Jazeera flight at 5 a.m. from Kuwait claimed that they were forced to stay back near the bus stand for over four hours.
A woman said they had been assured of all support by the Health Department officials prior to their departure from Kuwait. However, they failed to provide even food at the time of arrival, she said.
Some NRKs who expressed their helplessness in getting home quarantine facilities were the most upset. They said they were not offered institutional quarantine support. An order recently circulated by the district administration among various other departments explaining its plan to implement decentralised quarantine facilities was one of the main issue which created the confusion, they claimed.
NRK leaders from the city said the district administration’s plan to close down about 40 institutional quarantine centres in Kozhikode district had already created widespread confusion among the health workers.
The officials justified it with a claim that the government-supported quarantine centres were not opted by the NRKs, they argued.
The leaders said that the decentralised quarantine facilities, if implemented with the support of the local bodies concerned, would not be a convenient choice for the NRKs.
Persons who were unable to opt for home quarantine due to personal constraints or financial difficulties should be offered institutional quarantine facilities arranged by the district administration, they demanded.
Some of the stranded NRKs also flayed the proposal to give them paid quarantine facilities in the city limit as opted by some of the previously returned members. The idea was rejected by many of them with a claim that it would double their financial burdens during the quarantine period.
They said the institutional quarantine facilities should be continued to help the needy persons other than sending them to remote villages without any proper facilities.
