Arifur Rahman Rabbi
The Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh mulls to reduce the quarantine time for passenger arriving in Bangladesh from 14 days to five days.
CAAB chairman Air Vice-Marshal M Mafidur Rahman said that they were considering to reduce the quarantine time to five days and issue would be discussed in a meeting on Thursday night.
“We have limited quarantine facilities here. So, the expatriates are asked to come after confirming hotel bookings. They get on the plane talking about the hotel but after reaching Dhaka they refuse to stay at hotels,” he said explaining the reason behind the move to reduce the quarantine period.
Meanwhile, around 14,600 expatriates have left the country for their respective workplaces including Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and UAE, in the past five days since April 17 on special flights.
Among them more than 10,000 are expatriate workers and the remaining are visit visa passengers and transit passengers, said the CAAB chairman.
The government initially imposed various restrictions from 5 to 11 April to combat the second wave of coronavirus. Since then, domestic flights remained suspended like other inter-district transports.
Later, the ban was extended for two more days till April 13 and finally up to April 28 to contain the super-spreaders of coronavirus.
Due to the strict restrictions, all international passenger flights remain suspended since April 14 when a weeklong lockdown was imposed. However, medical, cargo, and special flights are exempted from the ban.
Bangladesh authorities allowed special flights to six countries – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, and China – for carrying the Bangladeshi migrants.
A total of 14 domestic and foreign airlines, including the national flag carrier Biman, is operating the special flights. Other carriers include US-Bangla Airlines, Saudia, Oman Air, Salam Air, Qatar Airways, Emirates, Etihad, Air Arabia, Air Arabia Abu Dhabi, Fly Dubai, China Eastern and China Southern Airlines.
