114 stranded Bangladeshis return home from UK

As many as 114 Bangladeshis, who were marooned in the UK due to a travel ban over the coronavirus pandemic, have returned home.

They arrived in Dhaka on a special chartered flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines from London at 9:45am Monday.

Most of the returning passengers are students, the High Commission of Bangladesh in the UK said in a statement.

Bangladesh High Commissioner to the UK Saida Muna Tasneem saw off the returnees at the London airport, according to a bdnews24.com report.

Earlier, the government, at the request of the Bangladesh High Commission in London, arranged for a special flight operated by Biman and chartered by the Bangladesh Air Force Welfare Trust to repatriate its stranded citizens.

The High Commission facilitated their return by forming a COVID-19 Emergency Repatriation Committee. Initially, more than 200 Bangladeshi nationals, including students, had booked seats on the flight but many of them later cancelled their bookings.

All passengers carried medical clearance certificates so that they could be guided into 'home quarantine' upon their return to Bangladesh, the High Commission said. 

“We are grateful to the government, especially Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their initiative and the Bangladesh Air Force in particular for chartering this flight,” said the high commissioner.

“We are humbly gratified that we could reunite the Bangladeshi citizens, in particular students, stranded in the UK with their families in Bangladesh before the Eid-ul-Fitr festival.”