Mangalore, May 15: In a persistent effort to pressurize the Civil Aviation Ministry of India to launch direct flight from Mangalore Airport to Saudi Arabia, a delegation of Coastaldigsest.com, owned by Amaco group of companies, submitted a memorandum to Praful Patel, the Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation, reiterating its demand at the sidelines of inaugural ceremony of New Integrated Building of Mangalore Airport on Saturday, May 15.
Admitting that there is a need of direct air link between Mangalore and Saudi Arabia, Praful said that the ministry is considering the issue seriously and revealed that plans of initiating Mangalore-Saudi direct flights are already in the pipeline.
Mohammed Althaf, the Director of Coastaldigest.com handed over the memorandum to Patel and explained him the problems faced by mangalorean community in Saudi Arabia due to the non availability of direct flights to Mangalore. Mohammed Sharief, the Administrative Manager of Coastaldigest.com was present.
Praful Patel recalled that Mohammed Asif, the CEO of Coastaldigest.com accompanied by a host of regional leaders from Mangalore had handed over a memorandum to him in New Delhi, approximately three months ago.
The memorandum says that there is an urgent need of connecting Mangalore directly to Saudi Arabia as a large number (approximately 200,000) of NRIs from the said region including the North Kerala connected with the border of the region engaged in businesses or employed in the Arab country.
“Thousands of families and bachelors usually fly from Riyadh, Dammam & Jeddah to Mangalore by way of Mumbai International Airport and other terminals in India. Passengers especially women, children, elderly and sick people have to wait several hours at connecting Airports to get a domestic flight to Mangalore, which is really time-consuming of more than 12 hrs and if there is any delay in international flight, then it will end up in missing connecting flight that again lengthens its time up to 36 hours”, the memorandum states.
A copy of the memorandum was also submitted to M Veerappa Moily, the Union Law Minister.
A similar memorandum was submitted by Moideen Bava on behalf of Dakshina Kannada District Congress Minority Cell on the occasion.
UT Khader, MLA, Oscar Fernandes, the Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha), Moideen Bava, President, District Congress Minority Cell, Yenepoya Abdulla Kunhi, Chancellor Yenepoya University, and many others accompanied the team of Coastaldigest.com.
Comments
Add new comment