Twenty three Kenyans in the diaspora have died of the coronavirus. This is according to a report by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs released yesterday. Ten were in the US, four in the United Kingdom, two in Switzerland, one in Saudi Arabia and another in Sweden. The ministry is in the process of evacuating Kenyans in the diaspora, on condition they pay for their own flight.
Distress calls
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has responded to distress calls of Kenyans in several parts of the world and in collaboration with various foreign governments and airlines has facilitated return of hundreds of Kenyans stranded in several countries,” they said in a press release, adding they have to foot their own bills.
This month, the state has evacuated Kenyans in India, China, London, United Arabs Emirates, Pakistan and Egypt.
A patient who was to be on the flight from India died just as they were about to board the aircraft, the ministry said. It was reported that he had been ailing. Most of the passengers who arrived on the aircraft from India were patients and caregivers who had been stranded for months after airports restricted travel to contain covid-19.
The flight from China arrived on Saturday night with 165 passengers, most of them jobless after they were laid off from their respective jobs in China.
“Majority of this group are Kenyans impacted by the coronavirus in terms of job losses, students who have completed their studies, business people caught in the lockdown and Kenyans caught on the wrong side of the law in China,” said the ministry.
One of the returnees said most of them had to take loans to facilitate their travel, and some had been forced to stay in tiny hotel rooms after they were locked out of their houses due to unpaid rent.
“When the plane touched down at JKIA, we celebrated. I cried. It had never felt so good to return home. We come back bearing shame because we are jobless and have so much debt, but we are free,” said one of the returnees. The lot come against the background of reports about mistreatment and racism against Africans in China.
They have since been taken to quarantine facilities, where they await government direction on who will pay for their quarantine fee.
No guidance
Eunice Kalekye said the cost of testing and the flight was already too much, and she was hoping they would not be subjected to more bills.
Steven Njau in Dubai said though he reads about Kenyans being evacuated from the UAE, he has no information on how they are chosen and gets no guidance when he calls the embassy.
“I have been trying to reach the Consulate and every time the staff at the Kenya Consulate kept on telling me that someone will call me back,” he said, saying there are many other Kenyans in Dubai and Qatar who are jobless and desperately want to come home.
Other Kenyans said the Foreign Affairs Ministry has focused on other regions and ignored the plight of those in Africa.
“Nobody is telling us if there will be a flight from South Africa, yet there are so many Kenyans here. We ask all the time, but get no response,” said Rose Nafuna.
The ministry has also been working on evacuating foreign nationals, and their statistics indicate that so far, 2,268 foreign nationals have been repatriated to their countries. Foreign nationals are also expected to pay for their own flight tickets.
A majority of them have complained about the exorbitant prices they are expected to pay. At the Kenya Airways website, a one-way ticket from Nairobi to London costs about Sh17,000.
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