Efforts are continuing for the evacuation of Keralites still stranded in Ukraine, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said, even as more students reached Kerala safely on Monday.
Six students reached Kochi by a 5.20 p.m. flight while one student reached Kozhikode. Five others were expected to reach Thiruvananthapuram by Monday night. Eighty-two students had reached the State on Sunday.
The State government has urged the Centre to arrange emergency supplies for students stranded in the northeastern Ukranian cities such as Kharkiv and Sumy. In a letter to the Ministry of External Affairs, Suman Billa, Principal Secretary (Industries and NORKA), pointed out that the State government was receiving numerous distress calls from students in these cities. They have taken refuge in bunkers and shelters and have run out of essential supplies. Communication is also becoming problematic as data services are getting disrupted and power supply is erratic, the letter said. Girls are facing hardship as they are unable to get sanitary napkins and other supplies, it said.
The Union Cabinet Secretary has informed the Chief Secretary that details of Indians still in Ukraine would be passed on to the States. Once that is done, the families would be contacted through the district administrations, Mr. Vijayan said in a Facebook post. The district administrations had already started contacting the families using information available with the NoRKA, he said.
The Chief Minister also urged Indian students in Ukraine to make use of the special trains announced by Ukraine Railways for evacuation as the weekend curfew had been lifted in Kyiv, the Ukranian capital.
3,493 registrations
As on Monday, 3,493 Keralites stranded in Ukraine have registered with NoRKA.
The highest number of registrations were from the following universities: 667 from the Kharkiv National Medical University, 586 requests from the Zaporizhzhia State Medical University, 515 from the Sumy State Medical University , 260 from the Odessa National University, and 259 from the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University.
The requests were received from Keralites in 43 educational institutions, while 332 requests fell in the 'others' category.
