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Don't compare us with other countries, govt says of Wuhan evacuation
Foreign Ministry acting spokesperson Teuku Faizasyah said on Wednesday that officials were finalizing plans to airlift Indonesian citizens from the virus-stricken province and sought to coordinate with the Chinese government so that the latter could facilitate the evacuation process.
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The first charter flight from the Chinese city of Wuhan, which was arranged by Japan's government to evacuate its citizens, lands at Haneda airport in Tokyo on Thursday. (AFP/Kazuhiro Nogi)
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s countries around the world scramble to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan in China, the government has insisted that it is working effectively to secure the repatriation of Indonesian nationals from the Chinese city and the surrounding Hubei province, where the novel coronavirus has spread rapidly.
Foreign Ministry acting spokesperson Teuku Faizasyah said on Wednesday that officials were finalizing plans to airlift Indonesian citizens from the virus-stricken province and sought to coordinate with the Chinese government so that the latter could facilitate the evacuation process.
While some countries, including Indonesia, have begun to accelerate efforts to evacuate their people, the United States and Japan are reported to be the first two countries to have flown their respective citizens out of Wuhan -- the epicenter of the virus outbreak. About 204 US citizens left the Chinese city on Wednesday, while at least 206 Japanese arrived in Tokyo on the same day.
Answering questions about Indonesia's progress in securing the evacuation of its citizens from Wuhan, especially now that countries like Japan had successfully brought their citizens home, Faizasyah told journalists that, "we are not in a position to compare one country with another."
"What we can tell you now is that every system is working right now and that the government through our embassy in Beijing has been specifically assigned by the Indonesian Foreign Ministry to intensify communication with the Chinese authorities," he said on Wednesday.
Faizasyah explained that the ministry had been maintaining coordination with other ministries and institutions to prepare the evacuation process for Indonesians who were currently trapped in some of the locked-down cities of Hubei, including Wuhan.
“People need to understand that the evacuation process takes time because our people are spread across Hubei province. We have to overcome that issue first to ensure that the evacuation process runs smoothly,” he said during a briefing with the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB).
Faizasyah also said that they had yet to receive an update from the Chinese authorities regarding evacuation permits. However, he gave an assurance that the process was ongoing as the government was preparing technical requirements.
Data from the ministry shows that there are 243 Indonesian citizens in the quarantined zone, around 100 of them residing in Wuhan.
The Air Force is keeping three aircraft and health personnel on standby to evacuate Indonesian nationals from the ground zero of the coronavirus outbreak at any time, awaiting instructions from the central government.
As of Wednesday, the pneumonia-like ailment had killed 132 people in China and infected over 6,000 globally. Indonesia has yet to report any confirmed case of coronavirus to date.
