State Emergency Commission: Over 10K Mongolians repatriated since coronavirus

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. Due to ongoing ban on all international travel of passengers to and out of Mongolia, including Mongolian passengers, to prevent from spread of COVID-19 pandemic, there are estimated 11,000 Mongolian travelers stranded abroad and wanting to return home immediately, reported last week the State Emergency Commission (SEC). As the number of Mongolians abroad wishing to return home is expected to rise, and based on the limited capacity of medical capacity and sufficiency of accommodation for mandatory isolation, only people with reasonable excuses to return home, such as health and age concerns and people with young children, are being given seats on the charter planes. At today’s press briefing on the regular update on the repatriation campaign of Mongolia, Director General of the Consular Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs L.Munkhtushig informed that since the country’s first repatriation flight chartered to Wuhan city of China on February 3, Mongolia has arranged 22 charter flights until June 15, and the total number of Mongolians brought from foreign countries by air and ground transport has reached 10,020. Munkhtushig further announced that thanks to the increased medical and hospital capacity, more people will be able to return home. Additional or third flight of this month to Seoul will be chartered on June 20 to bring transit Mongolian passengers from Southeast Asian countries, according to Munkhtushig. Including the flights made to Australia, Kazakhstan, Japan and India this month, and the flights to Seoul, South Korea (June 17, 18 and 19), flight to Frankfurt, Germany (June 19) and Seattle, USA on June 21 that are already on the plan, a total of nine charter flight will be organized, bringing 2,300 people from abroad within June 2020. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Emergency Commission have been exerting constant efforts to make records of Mongolians living around the globe living under distressed conditions and found that the nationals in Turkey, where over 5,000 Mongolians reside in, have been living with poorer conditions compared to Mongolians living in other foreign countries. Therefore, the Consulate General of Mongolia in Istanbul, Turkey has started delivering 7-10-day grocery vouchers to more than 580 Mongolians of 168 household families who are facing hardships amid the COVID-19 and will continue with the assistance. Also at the press briefing, it was informed that more than 2,000 people are staying at government-designated mandatory isolation facilities currently, and around 1,300-1,500 people will be staying 21-day under isolation on the voting day of the 2020 parliamentary election, which is set on June 24. Munkhtushig confirmed that those people will not able to cast their ballots under the Law on COVID-19 prevention, fight, and mitigation of its socio-economic impact, which allowed to restrict some constitutional rights in an effort to prevent from the spread of the pandemic. All incoming passengers on charter flights from abroad are signing a paper before boarding that they agree to this condition of not being able to vote for the election, as they will be directly taken into isolation after landing in Mongolia. Moreover, an official from the Ministry of Health earlier today said that those who are discharged from 21-day institutional isolation and self-isolating themselves at their homes for 14 days as ruled by the SEC by the time of the election day are also not eligible to vote.