FlyAmritsar Initiative seeks more evacuation flights for Canadian residents

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, April 22

FlyAmritsar Initiative has appealed to the Canadian Government for more evacuation flights for Canadian permanent residents from the Amritsar airport.

In a letter to Francois-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Government of Canada, FlyAmritsar Initiative has thanked the Canadian Government for making flight arrangements from the Amritsar airport through a series of humanitarian evacuation flights for Canadian citizens and their immediate permanent resident relatives stranded in Punjab.

The Initiative is a non-government civil society advocacy campaign working on aviation-related issues linked to Punjab with impetus on direct air connectivity of Amritsar with Canada.

In a press note issued here on Wednesday, Anantdeep Singh Dhillon, convener (North America), FlyAmritsar Initiative informed that hundreds of Canadians stuck in Punjab had now been united with their families after returning to Canada on these flights from Amritsar via Delhi and London.

Dhillon said, according to the Canadian High Commission in India and Consulate General of Canada in Chandigarh, all the current and additional flights were being made available only to the Canadian citizens and their immediate family members who are permanent residents of Canada and who are travelling with them.

Owing to this situation, thousands of permanent residents and their families are feeling abandoned and let-down by the authorities of the nation they chose as their new home.

Since the numbers are huge, he could fathom the reason to first accommodate Canadians falling in the citizenship category, but at the same time we fervently appeal to the government to further male logistic arrangements for a series of new humanitarian evacuation flights from Amritsar and other airports in India, to bring back these stranded permanent residents along with citizens of Canada.