A total of 83 nationals arrived in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela this Tuesday, February 16, from the Republic of Ecuador, in a new day of the Plan Vuelta a la Patria, a humanitarian bridge that -since its launch in 2018- has returned to the country more than 23 thousand Venezuelans who were in vulnerable situations in different nations of the world.
From the José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport, in Guayaquil, the Conviasa flight took off with this group of compatriots who return to their country in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, for which they were received at the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, in La Guaira state, under all the biosafety protocols and prevention measures promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Bolivarian Government.
With this, there are 169 returnees from Ecuador in February. At the beginning of the month, 86 compatriots returned to the country, complying with the instructions of President Nicolás Maduro to reactivate humanitarian flights in the face of the health emergency that continues this year 2021.
Langel Ortiz, one of the Venezuelans in this group of beneficiaries, thanked the Venezuelan authorities for the prompt response to the repatriation request for him and his brother, who suffered an accident on January 1 and is in a delicate state of health. “I went to the Embassy in Ecuador with a medical report and two days later they called me, and today we are returning to Venezuela,” he explained.
In this sense, the Vice-minister for Air Transport and President of Conviasa, Ramón Velásquez Araguayán, stated that the Venezuelan airline will continue to comply with the lines issued by the Head of State and recognized the work of the pilots and crew, “who do this humanistic work , a day-to-day work for our compatriots to return safely to their homeland.”
Counting those who returned this time, there are already 4,337 nationals who have been repatriated from Ecuador with the Plan Vuelta a la Patria, to reach a total of 23,017 Venezuelans from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Italy and Spain.