The failure to arrange a flight has forced the government to scrap its plans to bring back 171 Bangladeshis from the locked-down cities in China amid a deadly coronavirus outbreak.  

“We can’t send any flight. No crew member agrees to go there either. So, we’ve told them [stranded Bangladeshis] to wait,” Bangladesh Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said.

“We’ve spent much for those who want to return now, but still it’s not possible,” Momen said, citing that the pilots of the special Wuhan flight have been denied entry to other countries, bdnews24 reported.

Momen also said that it would have been possible to evacuate the Bangladeshis from China if the government could manage a chartered Chinese plane.

“China had agreed once as well. But they refused later. It’s a sensitive matter,” he said.

Momen also denied the allegations of shortage of food and drinking water due to the lockdown saying the Chinese authorities were sending food and water properly on time to the 23 places where the Bangladeshis stay.

The first cases in December were traced to a seafood market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the heart of the epidemic from where Bangladesh evacuated 312 citizens and quarantined them in Dhaka on Feb 1.