Dubai: Nineteen Indians are stuck at the Dubai International Airport for the last 21 days after India announced its COVID-19 lockdown, leaving them tired, homesick and desperate to return home, according to a media report.
Most of these stranded persons were in transit when India stopped inbound flights in view of the coronavirus pandemic, the Gulf News reported.
The following few days these stranded persons made the airport benches their home. After COVID-19 tests on March 21 -- which was negative for all -- they were shifted to the Dubai International Airport Hotel on March 25.
Currently, all the stranded Indians are lodged at the airport hotel. One of the stranded persons is 37-year-old Arun Singh, who missed his 4 am Emirates flight to Ahmedabad on March 22.
Singh says it is cruel irony that sleep is what he does for most of the day now. "I have been eating and sleeping and eating and sleeping ever since they put us here (airport hotel). I am comfortable but am desperate to go home," said Singh, an IT employee at a UAE bank.
Singh, unlike the other stranded Indians, has a UAE residency visa but he cannot leave the airport because of suspension of visas. Singh does not know when he will leave for India. "Every few days I send messages to the Indian consulate officials but am yet to hear back from them," he told the Gulf News.
