India sends woollens and blankets

New Delhi already started loading an aircraft with 22 tonnes of woollens and blankets to be dispatched to the worst-affected coastal city of Sendai in northeastern Japan.
“India sending wool, good quality blankets for the people of Sendai and others affected by Japan quake. 1st plane load being readied,” Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao tweeted on social networking website Twitter.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) got in touch with the state governments of Haryana and Punjab to procure large quantities of woollens and blankets to be dispatched to Sendai.

New Delhi took the decision to send woollens and blankets after consulting Tokyo. “Discussed this with Jap (Japanese) Amb (Ambassador) in Delhi and we felt this was most useful and needed item given cold weather conditions in affected areas,” added Rao.
Since the quake and tsunami hit Japan, the Foreign Secretary has been in touch with Akitaka Saiki, the Japanese Ambassador to India, as well as with New Delhi’s envoy to Tokyo, Alok Prasad, to explore how the calamity-hit people could be helped.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too offered all sorts of assistance in a letter to his Japanese counterpart Naoto Kan.

Meanwhile, as many as 30 Indians, who were in one of the tsunami-hit areas of Japan, were reportedly traced in a rehabilitation centre and shifted to a hotel, sources said on Sunday.

There are approximately 25,000 Indians in Japan, concentrated in the Kanto and Kansai regions. According to the MEA, none of them were hurt in the quake and the subsequent tsunami.