The Canadian government has yet to undertake meaningful action to bring back the up to 200 Canadians stranded in coronavirus-stricken Iran, Iranian Canadian Congress (ICC) Vice President Pouyan Tabasinejad told Sputnik
TORONTO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th March, 2020) The Canadian government has yet to undertake meaningful action to bring back the up to 200 Canadians stranded in coronavirus-stricken Iran, Iranian Canadian Congress (ICC) Vice President Pouyan Tabasinejad told Sputnik.
Last week, Tabasinejad in an open letter called on Ottawa to repatriate the Canadians stranded in the Persian Gulf state.
"We have only those who contacted us... the last time we counted it was around 150. I'd predict it's about 200 now," Tabasinejad said about the number of requests from Iranian Canadians seeking to return home. "We haven't gotten any real response. The government is still telling people that they can take commercial flights out of the country."
The open letter was in response to comments made last week by Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne who said there are no plans to extract Canadians from coronavirus-stricken countries similar to the evacuation from China's Hubei province. Canada's top diplomat said Canadians seeking to leave Iran and other countries where COVID-19 rates have spiked should do so via commercial means.
Global Affairs Canada did not respond to Sputnik's request for comment.
Tabasinejad and other community members have expressed concern that the number of commercial options for leaving Iran continues to dwindle by the day, with a number of countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and Bahrain suspending air traffic with Iran.
The ICC's VP cited international efforts to evacuate foreign nationals from Iran as an example for Canada.
On Tuesday, the UAE become the latest state to evacuate its citizens from Iran while China, India, Qatar and Kuwait are reportedly planning to do the same.
Iran has recently been ravaged by the deadly virus, with the country's health authorities reporting 835 new COVID-19 cases in the country over the past 24 hours. The death toll now stands at 77 and the total number of infections has reached 2,336.
Canada his home to one of the largest Iranian diasporas in the world, with an approximate 300,000 Canadians of Iranian descent and many still traveling to their ancestral homeland for personal and professional reasons.
The novel coronavirus was first detected in China in late December and has since spread to more than 50 countries, prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a global health emergency. More than 89,000 people have been infected with the virus worldwide, some 3,000 have died and more than 45,000 have recovered.
