Diplomatic Correspondent :
Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said there is no scope to bring back the rest of 171 Bangladeshis from the locked-down city of Wuhan in China instantly amid a deadly coronavirus outbreak.
The minister revealed the decision to the media after an event in Dhaka on Saturday as the death toll from the disease passed 700 in China with more than 34,000 confirmed cases globally.
The first case in December was traced to a seafood market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the heart of the epidemic from where Bangladesh evacuated 312 citizens and quarantined them in Dhaka on February 1.
The government said all those Bangladeshis who wanted to return cannot be brought back instantly.
“We’ve spent much for those who want to return now, but still it’s not possible,” Momen said, citing that the pilots of the special Wuhan flight have been refused entry to other countries.
After the evacuation, Cabinet Secretary Khandker Anwarul Islam had said, a refusal by the crew to fly the plane is a big problem to bring back the 171 others.
“If we can find a plane to charter, that will be the best option. And in that case Chinese planes will be the first preference,” the secretary said.
Momen said also on Saturday that it would have been possible to evacuate the Bangladeshis from China if the government could manage a chartered Chinese plane.
We can’t send any flight. No crew member agrees to go there either. So, we’ve told them [stranded Bangladeshis] to wait,” the minister said.
Some of the Bangladesh nationals studying at the Three Gorges University in Yichang, some 285 kilometres from Wuhan have said that a total of 172 Bangladeshi students have been stranded there.
They complained of a shortage of food and drinking water due to the lockdown.
Momen said that the Chinese authorities were sending food and water properly on time to the 23 places where the Bangladeshis stay.
The Bangladesh Embassy in Beijing was maintaining regular communication with the stranded Bangladeshis and a team of 384 persons was continuously enquiring about them, according to the minister.
