Algeria has started this week a second large-scale operation for the repatriation of its nationals stranded abroad following the pandemic of the novel coronavirus. The Prime minister, Abdelaziz Djerad, instructed the minister of foreign Affairs, the minister of the Interior, local Communities and spatial Planning, the minister of Transport, minister of Tourism, arts and Crafts and family Work " in order to mobilize the fleet and shipping in the next few days as well as the hotel facilities to be used in this framework for the period of quatorzaine care, preventive health applicable to repatriated persons ", said an official press release.
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The quatorzaine imposed
The operation " will focus in the first place the stranded families as well as the persons who carried out the movements for health care and our students abroad ", according to the same source. Some three billion dinars (about 20 346 000 euros) have been mobilized in mid-July for the cost of quatorzaines imposed on citizens repatriated. In early July, the president Abdelmadjid Tebboune, has defended the under quatorzaine, explaining that " some of the people that we evacuated, the Algerian has benefited from the repatriation, we have found when even almost 50 contaminated people ". Under quatorzaine, according to the head of the State, a fact avoid "a exponential progression" of contamination. About 27 hotels are at the level of 25 wilayas (departments) are available to receive approximately 70 % of all of the repatriated algerians. According to the programme established by the algerian authorities, the repatriation, which began on 20 July and extending until 26 July, affecting several countries.
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The SOS of Algerians abroad
so Far, 13 000 Algerians have been repatriated via special flights. In France alone, 5 000 citizens are waiting to be brought back to the country. Since march 17, it will be recalled that, our borders and our airspace are closed, a measure which was to effect the cancellation in the cascade of commercial flights, preventing de facto our nationals who were travelling before this date to return home. Since the closure of the borders to algeria on the 17th of march, many Algerians were trapped, for several months, abroad in the absence of commercial flights or ferry connections. The daily El Watan evokes this situation by summarising the content of pages in Facebook, including " Algerians blocked in France ", which has more than 10,000 members. "Of the SOS and of testimony in the cascade are posted on these pages, with regular photos and videos of the poignant showing of the Algerians completely left to fend for themselves, become HOMELESS, sleeping in the street, in parks, wandering in the outskirts of the exile ". An open letter was even addressed, on the 6th of July, the president Tebboune by the Algerians blocked abroad : "It is now four months that we are abandoned to the stranger, exhausted morally and destitute financially, we are surviving in squalid living conditions, some of us have fallen in depression, on learning of the loss of a loved one in Algeria. ""In spite of our registration to the campaign of repatriation launched by the ministry of the Interior at the beginning of the month of April, no information has filtered on our program of repatriation (...), the consular services are mostly unavailable or, at best, they ask us to wait again and again," we read further in this letter.
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Blockages and malfunctions
" I don't know if they are overwhelmed or incompetent because they apply the instructions of the authorities in Algiers ", fulminates the phone against the consulate of algeria on the spot Arezki in Spain, blocked for several weeks between Barcelona and Alicante. "They call us in the evening for the next day to reach Alicante, and embark the same afternoon for Oran... How will the families that are far away ?" asks yet Arezki. A group of researchers algerians also blocked in Spain finds herself in a confusing situation : "we Are asked to return with the repatriation operation, but at the same time our guardianship (ministry of higher Education) requires that we end our internships and work here," said by e-mail Amina, researcher algeria in earth science of the stock market in a laboratory in Andalusia.
"please, please, accept the containment"
Of their sides, the consular authorities are trying to ensure the compliance of the quatorzaine of returnees. The consul of Alicante in Spain, goes there even a verve little formal : "I will share a piece of bread that I have earned with the sweat of my brow, and in all honesty with every Algerian in difficulty (...) trust the men and women of the consulate of Algeria in Alicante and Algiers also, who work to make you go back to your respective families remained in the country. But please, please, accept the containment, accept the containment. "
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