Mining baron Janardhana Reddy can’t campaign in Ballari for Karnataka polls: Supreme Court

Mangaluru, June 11: The Saudi Arabia based Expertise Contracting Company, which is repatriating its employees to India and other countries, today allocated around 90 seats of one of its chartered flights to Kannadigas stranded in Saudi Arabia. 

The Gulf Air flight took off with around 175 passengers on board from Dammam International Airport around noon local time. It is expected to land at Mangaluru International Airport at around 7 p.m. Indian time. 

In fact the company had chartered the flights only to repatriate its employees. However, due to the lack of special flights under Vande Bharati Mission, the company decided to help the other stranded Kannadigas in Saudi Arabia, who had approached Saudi Kannadigas Humanity Forum for help. 

A company official said that around 2,000 employees from various countries in the Indian subcontinent are being repatriated, of which 1,665 are Indians.  Already hundreds of them have reached India, and hundreds are still waiting for repatriation. 

“We are grateful to Expertise for allowing to travel in the flight which the company had chartered to repatriate its own employees,” said one of the passengers before boarding the flight at the airport.  

Director of Expertise, KS Shaikh said the 20-year-old Expertise group, one of the largest conglomerates in the GCC operating in petrochemical and heavy equipment sectors, has more than 10,000 employees and their family members in the Gulf, mainly in Jubail, one of the largest industrial cities.

Of these, the company has chosen over 2,000 employees for the covid-related repatriations considering various emergencies. He said 12 chartered flights have been engaged to carry out the repatriation exercise to the Indian subcontinent.

Bengaluru, Feb 6: Karnataka government has launched an aggressive awareness campaign against the novel coronavirus across the state with a special focus on its bordering areas in wake of the three confirmed cases of the deadly pathogen in neighbouring Kerala.

According to Health Commissioner Pankaj Kumar Pandey, "All necessary information on the virus, its symptoms and precautions are being announced at public places like bus stops via radio from time to time."

“A video regarding the same is also being played in 500 cinema halls, advising masses to take precautions," he said.

Mangaluru, Jul 22: On the direction of the Karnataka government, private medical colleges in Dakshina Kannada have reserved 4,000 beds for the treatment of Covid-19 infected patients.

With this, the district will have a total of 4,720 beds for the treatment including that from the government set up.

The district administration has directed the eight private medical colleges to reserve 50 of its beds for treating the infected patients. Accepting the direction of the district administration, the management of medical colleges have submitted details on the beds reserved to the authorities concerned.