With the news of the first charter flight bringing back stranded Kiwis from India having successfully taken-off from New Delhi earlier today, it's time to acknowledge the officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the ground staff at the New Zealand High Commission in India for successfully executing what can easily be termed as a truly complex mission.
While the decision of sending charter flights and bearing the cost, even if partially, rested with the government, the responsibility of first mapping the geographical distribution of Kiwis stranded in different parts of India, and then chalking out a strategy and the logistics of eventually getting them to the flight at one designated airport, was definitely going to fall into the lap of MFAT and its ground team.
In that regard, the success of the MFAT and the NZ High Commission team in India, in facilitating this complex mission, surely deserves an unreserved applaud, and more so because India - a vast country by any stretch of the imagination is also in complete-lockdown itself with all means of domestic travel under complete halt.
The scene at the Indira Gandhi International airport just before departing of Air NZ Special Flight 1915
In such an environment of rigid closure of domestic travel, facilitating local travel of the stranded Kiwis from different corners of the country to the nearest port of travel was definitely going to be a challenging task that required some deft diplomatic work and the knowledge about how things work on the ground in India.
The fact that India is not only a vast geographical territory but also a federal-state with policing and law & order being a state-subject (outside the purview of central government at New Delhi) definitely made the task of getting the stranded Kiwis to one chosen airport a challenge.
However, the manner in which the NZ High Commission team managed to arrange busses for picking up Kiwis from the addresses where they were residing during the lockdown period and ferrying them right up to the airport in New Delhi is a commendable task that deserves appreciation.
A special mention of mettle and resilience of NZ Deputy High Commissioner
A special mention is in order for the young and freshly appointed diplomatic officer Erin Duncan, the Deputy High Commissioner at the NZ High Commission in New Delhi, who has been thrown into the deep end in the absence of a full-time High Commissioner during this completely unprecedented crisis. She has not only been manning the mission but has shown exemplary mettle, resilience and courage in coordinating one of the most complex evacuation missions that the MFAT has taken in recent times.
NZ Deputy High Commissioner Erin Duncan leading from the front at the Indira Gandhi international airport
Indeed, Ms Duncan has cemented her trajectory in the world of international diplomacy by stepping-up to this Covid-19 pandemic response.
In that regard, the goodwill of the Indian govt in facilitating the seamless travel of stranded Kiwis to the international airport in New Delhi, while it continues to strictly control any local domestic travel is also commendable, as without it the entire evacuation plan would have been defeated.
It has to be acknowledged that the Indian government in facilitating the evacuation of foreign citizens of many other countries had not to allow local domestic travel of this scale that crisscrossed the entire country - simply because either their citizens were concentrated in certain pockets from where connecting flights could be arranged for facilitating travel locally to connect with the outgoing flight.
Or even better the foreign countries had themselves arranged outgoing flights from local regional centres such as Amritsar (Punjab) from which does not require long local on-road travel to catch departing flights. The Indian High Commission in New Zealand has also been facilitating the right connections with India’s Ministry of External Affairs and securing requisite permissions on the ground.
The mammoth task of evacuating all Kiwis who have expressed interest in charter flights has just begun with two more confirmed flights from Mumbai and New Delhi, where in the case of the former MFAT ground staff have even offered pick up by bus services to places in the deep southern part of India such as Hyderabad and Bangalore, which is indeed commendable.
Although, a press release the office of the Foreign Minister has since offered to consider the possibility of another charter flight from the distant regional centre in South and Eastern India to the cities of Chennai and Kolkata, yet that does not in any manner trivialize what MFAT has been able to achieve at the ground level in India.
The task has just begun and a lot has to be still achieved, yet MFAT deserves unreserved applause for bringing a smile to many distressed Kiwis by bringing them back home.
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