PESHAWAR: Provincial authorities have confirmed 23 Pakistanis who returned from Afghanistan on Friday have tested positive for Covid-19 after being stranded in the neighboring country for weeks.
Pakistan opened its border with Afghanistan on Friday to bring back its nationals from Afghanistan where, according to rough estimates, more than 1,500 Pakistanis have been stranded since the global pandemic hit the region in February.
“Among the total 713 Pakistanis including 177 females who had arrived in Pakistan from Afghanistan on Friday, 23 persons are tested positive for coronavirus,” Deputy Commissioner for Khyber district, Mahmood Aslam Wazir, told Arab News on Sunday.
The border will be open for three days to allow Pakistani nationals to come home.
“The government decided on Friday to keep the border open for three days to facilitate their return,” Senator Taj Muhammad Afridi, chairman of Senate Standing Committee on States and Frontier Regions, told Arab News on Saturday and added the numbers of stranded Pakistani nationals could be much higher than estimated keeping in mind hundreds of truck drivers and their helpers were grounded across the border.
Last month, Pakistan sealed its western border with Iran and Afghanistan as a precautionary measure to contain the spread of coronavirus amid impassioned appeals sent to the Prime Minister highlighting the plight of stranded citizens.
Islamabad also decided last week to open the Chaman and Torkham border crossing points on “humanitarian grounds” to allow thousands of stranded Afghans to cross over into their country.
“I faced unspeakable problems during the last one month in Afghanistan,” Amjad Khan, a Pakistani dentist from Peshawar who runs his own medical practice in Kunduz, told Arab News after returning to his country on Friday night.
“I had to wait at Torkham border for ten days,” he continued. “When we crossed over, the border authorities shifted us to a quarantine center in Landi Kotal [a town in Khyber district]. People at the center say our blood results may take days to arrive. I feel a bit distressed right now.”
Afridi said that a large number of Pakistanis work in neighboring Afghanistan. Many of them are associated with the transportation industry, but there are several others who work with the health and education sectors. Some of them are also employed by printing corporations and construction businesses.
Just a day before their return to Pakistan, many of those trapped on the other side of the border told Arab News that they were running out of cash and living on charity food.
Mahmood Aslam Wazir said authorities in Torkham had allowed only those Pakistani citizens to enter the country whose names were mentioned in a list provided to them by the country’s diplomatic mission in Afghanistan.
“About 195 passengers and 101 trucks were allowed to enter Pakistan. We sent these individuals to quarantine centers and fumigated their trucks,” Wazir informed.
“We have established seven quarantine facilities with a collective capacity of 1,500,” he added.
Ubaidullah Mohmand, a homeopath who treats patients in Jalalabad, told Arab News he had crossed over via Torkham on Friday night after waiting two weeks for the border to open.
“They brought me to a quarantine center in Landi Kotal,” he said. “This place has all the facilities, such as food, but we want the authorities to share our blood reports soon.”
