The households of three of the British victims of final week’s Air India crash in Ahmedabad have criticised the UK authorities’s response to the catastrophe, saying they “feel utterly abandoned”.
It comes after an Air India Dreamliner crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad airport in western India, killing 229 passengers and 12 crew. One individual on the flight survived.
Among the many passengers and crew on the Gatwick-bound plane had been 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese nationals and one Canadian nationwide.
In an announcement, the households of three British residents who misplaced their lives mentioned they had been calling on the UK authorities to “immediately step up its presence and response on the ground in Ahmedabad”.
The households mentioned they rushed to India to be by their family members’ sides, “only to find a disjointed, inadequate, and painfully slow government reaction”.
“There is no UK leadership here, no medical team, no crisis professionals stationed at the hospital,” mentioned a household spokesperson.
“We are forced to make appointments to see consular staff based 20 minutes away in a hotel, while our loved ones lie unidentified in an overstretched and under-resourced hospital.
“We’re not asking for miracles – we’re asking for presence, for compassion, for motion,” another family member said.
“Proper now, we really feel completely deserted.”
The families listed a number of what they called “key issues”, including a “lack of transparency and oversight within the identification and dealing with of stays”.
They also demanded a “full disaster workforce” at the hospital within 24 hours, a British-run identification unit, and financial support for relatives of the victims.
A local doctor had “confirmed” the delays in releasing the bodies were “linked to extreme understaffing”, according to the families, who also called for an independent inquiry into the UK government’s response.
“Our family members had been British residents. They deserved higher in life. They actually deserve higher in dying,” the assertion added.
Households and mates of the victims have already expressed their anger and frustration – principally aimed on the authorities in India – over the lack of know-how.
