Kannadigas in Dhaka desperate to return to Karnataka

In February, Mohamed Samiulla left Bengaluru for a new job in Dhaka, Bangladesh as the general manager in charge of operations at a garments factory. The move came with the prospect of a better career and the promise of more money.

Bangladesh enforced a lockdown to tackle Covid-19 and has remained so for two months. Now, Shamiulla neither has a job nor a way to get back to Bengaluru.

Shamiulla is one among more than 60 Kannadigas stranded in Dhaka, desperate to return to Karnataka.

“I feel helpless, literally, because I’m neither here nor there,” Shamiulla told DH over the phone. “I was staying in an apartment, but I have now moved in with a friend because I had problems paying rent.”

Shamiulla’s restlessness is not confined to his inability to return. “Bangladesh has no preparation to face Covid-19. If you look at the way people are moving about here, the lockdown is just for namesake. In India, the police are at least enforcing the lockdown,” he said.

These Kannadigas came close to returning home when an Air India flight to Chennai was scheduled for May 14 under the Vande Bharat repatriation mission. A total of 63 people from Karnataka registered to board this flight. “But something happened and we were told that only Tamil Nadu people can board the Chennai flight,” said Srujan Reddy, a process consultant from Bengaluru who went to Dhaka on work in March.

According to Reddy, the first phase of the Vande Bharat had six flights from Dhaka to Delhi, Mumbai and Jammu & Kashmir. In the second phase, there is one flight from Dhaka that is meant for Jammu & Kashmir students, he said. “We are 70-80 people from Karnataka here. Some of us have lost jobs, struggling to pay rents and some like me who came on business.”

Besides the deluge of emails they have been sending to the authorities, these Kannadigas have also reached out to the Prime Minister’s Office and Chief Minister’s Office seeking help.

Deputy Chief Minister C N Ashwath Narayan said he was contacted on May 10. “I got the chief secretary to talk to the Ministry of External Affairs. I was told there’ll be a direct flight to Bengaluru and then I was assured that they will get on the Chennai flight. I will follow it up again and we’ll try to help them come back soon,” Narayan told DH.