The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) has welcomed South Africans back into the country after they have successfully been repatriated from Dubai and Doha.
The sixteen repatriated citizens from the two countries are now back in South Africa and will be put into quarantine and the same measures will be put in place for the first set of repatriated citizens that returned from Wuhan, China.
As the world goes into lockdown and the airspace is quiet due to sanctions, South African citizens are still out there with no way to get home. It has been reported that 2313 South Africans are currently stranded since the COVID-19 outbreak begun.
With many countries closing their borders it does make returning citizens home an extremely difficult task, The DIRCO will work closely with other countries in attempts to bring citizens home on chartered flights.
“The department wishes to assure all the South African citizens stranded abroad that it empathises with their plight and is doing whatever it can to assist them to be safe, as comfortable as possible and to travel back to South Africa,” said DIRCO.
