COVID Checks: Hardships Stalk Expats Returning Home To Odisha

Bhubaneswar: With Odisha imposing a lockdown against COVID-19 and making negative RT-PCR test reports mandatory for those entering the state, several expat workers wishing to return home are facing trouble at the border checkpoints.

Take the case of Ashish Das and his wife. Ashish, who works in the sales department of an MNC in Kolkata, was returning home to Bhubaneswar to meet his ailing parents.

The couple had undergone RT-PCR and tested negative too. Yet they were made to wait for almost eight hours at Laxmannath checkpoint on the Odisha- Bengal border.

Narrating his ordeal to Odisha Bytes, Ashish said, “Before leaving Kolkata, we underwent the RT-PCR test at Apollo Diagnostic Centre. We got the report after five days, but our names didn’t feature on the ICMR portal due to the negligence of the diagnostic centre. So we were stopped at the border for several hours.”

But the couple’s troubles didn’t stop there. Ashish said it took them a few more hours to reach Bhubaneswar due to the lockdown.

Another family comprising five members had to face the same problem while returning back to Odisha. They were detained for several hours at the Odisha-Bengal border before being allowed to enter.