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Migrant workers await repatriation, wealthy expats charter flights to return
Hundreds of higher income bracket Sri Lankan expatriates have recently started escaping their pandemic-hit destinations abroad by chartering aircraft from SriLankan and other companies to return home.
These trips are tailored as packages comprising “paid PCR, transport and hotel quarantine”. “They are groups of people who get together and contact an airline directly to charter a flight,” an authoritative official source said. “This practice appears to have started during the suspension of repatriation when anxious professionals linked up and contacted airlines.”
The larger number of passengers newly arriving or due to return are not blue collar or domestic workers, the most helpless category in West Asia. Many flights, even of SriLankan Airlines, are charters hired with Government approval by groups of expatriates with higher incomes, schedules seen by the Sunday Time show.
Separately, two foreign airlines have been cleared by the Government to operate certain commercial repatriation flights between West Asia and Sri Lanka despite SriLankan Airlines frequently making wide-body cargo trips to the same destinations and flying empty both ways.
Qatar Airways and Emirates have both brought paying passengers and are also set to do so in future. SriLankan Airlines, however, often deploys its A330 airplanes—which seat 269 in Economy—to carry cargo to and from West Asian destinations but makes the journeys largely passenger-free both ways.
SriLankan Airlines Chairman Ashok Pathirage said the decision to let Emirates and Qatar Airways operate repatriation flights was not made by his company. However, the national carrier has also made multiple such trips and is “willing to fly anywhere” as it has both the manpower and the aircraft. The national carrier uses its wide-body airplanes for cargo trips because of their large freight capacity, Mr Pathirage said. But none of these flights was operated at a loss. “We covered our cost,” he maintained, adding that the decision whether or not to bring back passengers on those flights was the Government’s prerogative based on available quarantine facilities, etc.
The Government has granted around 98 percent of repatriation flights to SriLankan because it’s the national carrier and “we want them to survive”, said Admiral Jayanath Colombage, Additional Secretary to the President for Foreign Relations. He was this week appointed Secretary to the Ministry of External Relations.
But there are other airlines like Emirates, Qatar Airways, Gulf Air and Korean Air which make requests through their governments to operate some repatriation flights to Sri Lanka. Emirates has already done three such trips (and will do more in future) while Qatar has done one. An advantage is that their aircraft are much bigger.
“With SriLankan, the maximum carrying capacity is 290 whereas Emirates can bring 420,” Admiral Colombage said. “When the demand is high for a large number of people to be repatriated, we prefer to have bigger aircraft.”
The receiving mechanism at Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) was strict and cumbersome with handlers in ebola kits. “It is not easy for a person to wear that for a long time,” he continued. “Whether it’s 50 people or 300 people, the effort is the same. So we like to bring bigger crowds.”
SriLankan now operates cargo flights to about 18 destinations. “We cannot bring people on every flight because we have a limitation of quarantine centres,” Admiral Colombage explained. “When there was the Kandakadu spike, we needed a large number of quarantine spaces so we had to limit bringing in people at that time.”
At present, the Government can only allow one repatriation flight per day. The charter option was given because the passengers were willing to pay for all services.
“People made requests saying they do not want to burden the Government and can pay for everything,” he said. “We like to encourage that and are now doing both types of repatriations in parallel.”
Between August 8 and 23, there are more than 15 charters, predominantly SriLankan, a few Emirates and Qatar Airways as well as some private airlines. They mostly land at Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport (MRIA) from where the arrivals are taken to their designated hotels. These flights have come from India, the United Arab Emirates, Melbourne and Sydney in Australia, the Maldives, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and the United States.
“A lot of housemaids and drivers desperate to come back cannot afford to use this option, should it even be open to them,” the source earlier quoted said. “When you buy the ticket, you also pay for the hotel and PCR. Normal repatriation flights where you go into free Government-run quarantine centres are still less frequent.”
The main excuse for not allowing an “exodus” of migrant workers was that Sri Lanka has limited quarantine space and testing capacity. However, China and India have both offered to help with tent-style quarantine facilities and doctors. But domestic policy has resolutely been to manage with local resources.
Repatriation was suspended on July 14 after the “Kandakadu cluster” (which did not start with a returning migrant) emerged. It was again stopped briefly in view of the August 5 parliamentary election but started shortly afterwards.
On August 6 and 7, two Emirates flights ferried nearly 600 migrant workers that the Emiratis had asked Colombo to take back as their visas had expired. This was a government-to-government arrangement with the West Asian State also agreeing to facilitate passage with discounted tickets.
Separately, the Sri Lankan Government has organised around 10 flights on SriLankan Airlines for migrants from Japan, Singapore, Lebanon, UAE, Jordan, Qatar, Chennai in India, Thailand, Malaysia, Cyprus and Bahrain (up to August 23).
The situation of migrant workers in West Asia is now more serious, sources in those countries said. The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment yesterday said the current official figure for COVID-19 related deaths of Sri Lankans abroad is 47.
The Government was bringing “as many as we can,” the Admiral said. Priority is being given after August 8 to the Maldives and West Asian nations like Qatar, UAE, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and also Israel. Around 40 percent of Sri Lankans are “illegal”, on expired visas or work permits.