Willing to return to their home state, over 21,000 NRIs put Punjab govt in a quandary, state gears up

Willing to return to their home state, over 21000 NRIs have put the Punjab government in a quandary. The government has been making elaborate arrangements to receive such a heavy influx of the NRIs

Punjab CM Capt Amarinder Singh
Punjab CM Capt Amarinder Singh
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Bipin Bhardwaj

Willing to return to their home state, over 21000 NRIs have put the Punjab government in a quandary. The government has been making elaborate arrangements to receive such a heavy influx of the NRIs.

Taking no chance after the "Nanded Pilgrims episode", the Punjab Government has directed the expert committee to formulate own guidelines and protocols for the return of over 21000 Punjabis settled abroad wanting to return to the state amid COVID crisis.

Punjab Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh gave directions to the committee in a video Conference with health officials and medical experts on Tuesday.

As the state prepared to handle a large influx of NRIs from other nations and stranded people from across the country, Amarinder Singh also issued a series of directives to check the spread of the deadly COVID-19, including strict directives to the Health Department to ensure mandatory screening of all such returnees, with institutional quarantine for those coming back from high-risk regions of India, and hotel/home quarantine for the NRIs.


He also ordered an immediate readiness audit of level 1 and 2 facilities.

Making it clear that he did not believe in the reliability of the certificates that the respective nations were required to give to the returnees, the CM said the NRIs should be given the option for quarantine, on payment basis, in hotels and at home, under supervision, pending testing, which should be done within 4-5 days of arrival.

With those coming from within the country, he said given the Maharashtra (Nanded) experience, wherein 27 per cent of the more than 1000 Punjabis who had returned so far had already shown positive results, the state government would take no chances. All such returnees would have to be quarantined in state centres, the CM added.

To deal with the additional pressure, the state government has also decided to rope in universities and state-run labs, with the Chief Minister sanctioning an immediate amount of Rs 12 crore for equipment and operational expense for 6 such institutions, namely Regional Disease Diagnostic Lab (RDDL), North Zone Jalandhar; GADVASU, Ludhiana; Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar; Punjabi University, Patiala; Punjab Biotech Incubator, Mohali, and Punjab Forensic Lab, Mohali.

According to an official statement, the state government has decided to come to the rescue of the central government testing facilities which are unable to enhance their capacities due to non-availability of kits from ICMR.


The Chief Minister has directed such centres to purchase kits for use for testing in Punjab from the open market, for which the state government will bear the expenses. It may be noted that the state is currently testing 2800 persons a day, a significant increase from 1500/day last week.

The Chief Minister also directed the DCs to prepare a list of private hotels that can be utilised for paid quarantine, while asking the Health Department to make an inventory of functional/non-functional private hospitals.

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