Around 416 seafarers returned back to Goa from Italy, but they had to face the resistance of the locals. The fear of coronavirus has made locals behave irrationally against their own people.
All the 419 seafarers were brought into the state in three different flights. According to the report published in the local daily Herald, It was a homecoming for sons of the soil, who were stranded in Italy, as 416 Goan seafarers landed at the Dabolim airport on Wednesday in three flights.
The first flight arrived with 168 passengers on board landed on the Dabolim Airport at around 10.30 am while the second flight with 167 passengers reached Goa at around 3 pm and the third flight with 81 passengers landed at night on the Dabolim Airport.
Immediately after landing, they had to go through a process swab checking for the coronavirus detection and later all of them were directed to board the Kadamba buses assigned to take them to the hotels where they will be quarantined.
The problem escalated when the seafarers arrived at the designated quarantine centre allotted to them in Candolim. The villagers became ferocious, looking at the bus filled with the Goan seafarers arriving in their village.
According to the sources, they started protesting the entry of seafarers into the village demanding the documents from them. It is a sad state of an affair that our own Goans who were working abroad to support their families were denied the entry in one of the villages of Goa by the local Goans.
It may be recalled that the first batch of seafarers had arrived in Goa and underwent the paid institutional quarantine and all of them were tested negative to the Cover test.
This entire batch of 416 seafarers had undergone the standard procedure of swab testing and until their test results declared they were asked to stay at the quarantine facility made for them in various parts of Goa.
