Kiwi-Indian community rallies to send medical help to Covid ravaged India Friday, May 7, 2021 Sandeep Singh
New Zealand’s Indian community has rallied together to organise and send urgent medical relief in the form of much required Oxygen Concentrator to India.
In a rare display of quick thinking and swift action, more than 15 diaspora organisations have come together under the leadership of the Indian High Commissioner to NZ Muktesh Pardeshi and the able guidance on the ground of Hon Consul of India in Auckland Bhav Dhillon to generate $150,000 and despatch the first container of 72 Oxygen Concentrator to India.
The relief consignment was despatched from Auckland airport on Tuesday, May 4, and had reached New Delhi on Thursday, May 6, where it would be handed over to India’s Red Cross Society, which would deploy it further as per medical emergency.
The country has been on my mind quite a lot in the past 18 months: from my last overseas trip to the country in February 2020 as part of a business delegation accompanying a ministerial mission, to the announcement earlier this month that flights from India would be suspended. India has been on a lot of other minds as well. Many of New Zealand’s international partners have been investing heavily in a broad relationship with the country, recognising its strategic importance. Whenever you look at India’s economic and demographic statistics, they’re startling. India has a million young people entering its working age population every month; an economy the same size as China’s was in 2004; and it is on track to be the most populated country in a matter of years.
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STUFF
Jacinda Ardern announces entry into New Zealand from India will be temporarily halted from April 11 after a surge in border cases.
Mandeep Bela looks to the soaring Covid-19 cases in the United States and Brazil and looks at the heartbreaking stories within the Indian community and has one question: Why India? Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Thursday announced that arrivals from India were being suspended between April 11 and April 28. The decision comes after 17 of 23 new cases of Covid-19 in managed isolation announced on Thursday had arrived from India. India is also seeing its highest number of daily confirmed coronavirus cases since the pandemic began.
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