With over million Indians in UAE, Indian mission provides food, psychological help

As the COVID-19 crisis spreads in West Asia, India's mission has been reaching out to its nationals in UAE and providing them psychological help and food.

Speaking exclusively with diplomatic correspondent Sidhant Sibal, Indian ambassador to UAE, Pavan Kapoor said both UAE and India have offered to fly back the respective stranded nationals but due to closure of Indian airspace things are not moving currently. UAE hosts over 3.3 million Indians, one of the largest concentrations of anywhere in the world.

WION: How is the Indian mission taking care of its nationals in UAE over the COVID-19 crisis?

Pavan Kapoor: One of the things we have done apart from setting up of the 24x7 helplines, both in Abu Dabhi and Dubai for the Indian citizens and the Indian nations here is that we have been trying to provide food to all those who are needy, some of whom we send food provisions to those who can cook, otherwise, we tried to send cooked meals to those bachelors in accommodation who either cannot go out for some reason or unable to afford food at this time.

In addition, we have set up, telemedicine helpline whereby patients or suspected patients are being called by Indian doctors to advised them what to do before they have taken to a quarantine facility or provided other treatment.

We are also providing psychological help through the phone line to calm people who are little concerned and panicking at the spread of coronavirus.

In addition to that, we are also continuing with a lot of work, in terms of continuing to provide passport facility, attestation services in these difficult times and also carrying on with the unfortunate task of sending back mortal remains of people who are passing away at this unfortunate times, this also complicated by the fact that our air space is not really open and we have to get special permission for mortal remains to travel on cargo planes which are going to India, and we are working with our authorities in India and have been managing to help quite a few people with that.

Finally, we are also trying to work with authorities to improve and increase the isolation facilities for our nationals.

WION: How are India and UAE collaborating on the COVID-19 crisis, especially on Indian and UAE citizens, any plans of repatriation?

Pavan Kapoor: One of the first things we are dealing with are cases of a large number of visitors from India, who are here and UAE resident permit holder whose visas and entry permits have expired and they are very concerned as to what is going to happen.

We have worked with UAE authorities to assure them that these visas will be extended and mostly without any penalty charges, so that is one of the things UAE authorities are helpful and working with us.

Another aspect is we are working with UAE authorities to create more isolation facilities for our nationals because the number of them getting infected is increasing, simply because they are a substantial portion of the population so as the number of cases of those being infected in this country goes up, the number of those of Indian nationals also going up. UAE authorities have offered to fly back and assist in flying back of our nationals who are wanting to go back to India.

We have UAE authorities to fly back there nationals who want to come back to UAE. As of now our airspace is still shut for passenger flights but as and when it opens up we will certainly work to help, work with the UAE authorities to get our nationals back to India in a safe and secure manner as possible.