While the Vande Bharat Mission has brought home thousands of people stranded abroad, the preference for the elderly, pregnant women and persons with medical emergencies meant that not everyone got a ticket to fly.
Two government-run flights brought back many Kashmiris from Dubai to Srinagar on May 22 and June 11. “However, over 800 stranded Kashmiris continued to suffer. We wanted to attend to their desperation,” Farooq Peerzada, an engineer working in Dubai, told The Hindu over the phone.
“Scores of companies stopped hiring and started thinning out staff in April, with many Kashmiris losing their jobs. We had no money to pay even rent. We started shifting to friends’ places. But sustaining ourselves was getting difficult with each passing day. Even our kids started suffering due to the slump,” said Adil Ahmad (name changed), who worked in the sales section of a company.
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Growing number of distress videos and appeals on social media platforms by stranded and jobless youth in Dubai and their families in Kashmir forced the community to work on a novel idea: pooling money and arranging the logistics for charter flights, with the financially less stressed buying their own ticket and others being fully or partially funded from the pool.
Two such flights, one on June 25 and the other on July 3, have helped around 385 desperate youth and their families escape the Dubai lockdown and the growing unemployment there due to the economic slump induced by the COVID-19 pandemic.
A third such flight is scheduled for next week, tentatively July 14.
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Brainchild of six
The entire initiative was the brainchild of six Dubai-based employees and businessmen — Kaiser Zargar, Alim Banday, Sajad Wani, Irfan Wani, Sadia Dehlvi and Mr. Peerzada. Their ‘Fly Kashmir Team’ collaborated with Miraj Islamic Art Centre, a carpet company, on the charter flights.
“It was a tedious process. We started registering the stranded passengers on J&K government-run portals to get approval from the Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir,” said Mr. Peerzada. Step-by-step clearances from India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation, Bureau of Immigration and Dubai’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs followed.
“The process became prolonged because of the need for securing airspace approval and to arrange medical staff and quarantine facilities in Srinagar. Finally, June 25 saw the first community-sponsored charter flight touch down in Srinagar,” said Mr. Peerzada.
According to an estimate, over 30,000 people from Kashmir, including employees and their families, live in Dubai.
A J&K government spokesman said 2.08 lakh stranded residents have returned to the Union Territory by July 11 by road and air.