As stranded citizens arrive, poor transport greets them

Our Reporter
Dimapur, May 16 (EMN): Nagaland has started bringing back its stranded citizens from the neighbouring north-eastern states, but the returnees have reportedly been encountering logistic problems at the designated reception camp.

On Friday morning (May 15), the second batch of returnees from Arunachal Pradesh consisting of more than 17 Nagas took off from Changlang district.

Speaking to Eastern Mirror, one of the returnees who requested anonymity said that they took off from Changlang at around 7.30 am and reached Dimapur around 10.30 pm the same day.

However, after being escorted to the Agri Expo site in Dimapur, which is the designated reception centre for returnees, she said they were taken aback by how the reception team handled the situation upon their arrival.

Realising that check-ups and other medical proceedings were necessary, she said that they followed the instructions laid down by the government.

Although comforting at first, she said that ‘things got sketchy’ as they were held up till 4 am the next day (May 16) without any information of what to do next, until they were finally taken to a quarantine facility at Medziphema in Dimapur district.

She said the people present at the reception camp informed them that they were ‘arranging the logistics’.

However, she said that the said ‘logistics came’ only after they had waited for more than five hours.

Another woman also told this newspaper that she did not understand why she had to be held up for more than five hours. “It might be that the reception team was caught unprepared or could have been yet another display of negligence as they were making the arrangement in haste, at the last hour,” she said.

Among the 17 returnees, she said that there was a mother with her eight-month-old child and some elderly citizens who were waiting for the government workers to take them to the quarantine facility, instead of being held up at the reception camp for hours.

The president of Nerist Naga Students’ Union, Vungthungo L Murry, who along with his union officials and Arunachal Pradesh’s nodal officer Diyur Yedi, is taking charge of stranded Nagas, said that they informed the Nagaland control room every time a batch was dispatched from Arunachal Pradesh, and they had done so even for the second batch.

Murry said that this was to ensure that there would not be any communication gap between the two sides, and that the government of Nagaland could take charge of the returnees effectively once they reach Dimapur.

‘Transportation and protocols’

According to the district surveillance officer, Dr. Imtiwabong Aier, transportation was the main reason behind the delay in taking the returnees to the quarantine facility at Medziphema.

Stating that most of the buses were returning from the inter-district transportations, he said that this ‘might have been the possible reason as to why there was delay in arranging one’.

Aier also said that since they do documentation and segregation of the returnees, the protocols might have also resulted in the delay.