THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: 'USA to Kerala Travel Group' is not a tour operator but a Malayali social media group borne out of the necessity to coordinate the evacuation Keralites stuck in the US when the pandemic changed their lives for worse in a foreign country.
The group has over 600 Keralites brought together by fate when India closed the sky for flights two days before the country announced a lockdown on March 24. Among them are pregnant women, IT professionals, who lost their jobs, students, tourists, sick and elderly. The active intervention of the group helped establish direct flights to Kerala under the Vande Bharat Mission and coordinate the evacuation of over 1,000 people so far.
It all started when Muhammad Fasal (Atlanta), Murali Das Mohan (Chicago), Nishil Muhammad (Atlanta), Prashant Venugopalan (Houston), Rahul Soman (SanFrancisco), Vishal Kumar (New Jersey), Jimmy Antony (New Jersey), who are strangers to one another, realised that they have something in common.
All of them had been stuck in the US and they were knocking at the doors of authorities for evacuation. Some of them lost their jobs and their visas had expired while some others have travel concerns due to the fact that their children have US citizenship or wife being in an advanced stage of pregnancy.
"The more we started interacting we realised there are more people sharing the same plight and hence started the WhatsApp group called 'USA to Kerala Travel Group'. Soon the number of members in the group swelled to over 600." said Rahul Soman, an IT professional from Guruvayur.
The group collected information on people interested in evacuation and sent the details to Indian embassy, Ministry of External Affairs, state government and MPs for arranging evacuation flights. They also managed to connect with Malayali organisations in the US through Salim Muhammad who is based in Michigan.
Though the repatriation flights under Vande Bharat Mission started to bring back stranded Indians from abroad since May 7, lack of flights to the state was a cause of worry for them.
"I did not want to go to other states and get quarantined because my wife was in an advanced stage of pregnancy," said Prasanth Venugopalan. The couple managed to return during the third phase of the evacuation on May 25 and wife Neena had been delivered of a baby boy in Thiruvananthapuram a couple of days ago.
'USA to Kerala Travel Group' managed to have a virtual meeting with Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan who agreed to arrange more flights to Kerala. There will be six flights in fourth stage of mission which will bring another 1,000 people. The group administrators also made travel guides for ticket booking, travel and quarantine for the benefit of people still stuck out there. We also plan to focus on the rehabilitation of the returnees, said Rahul.