AIRPORT operator Hermes has brought in camp beds for a group of British Muslim pilgrims stranded at Larnaca airport since the weekend who were yesterday highly impressed by the hospitality shown by airport management and staff.
Hamid Raza, one member of a group of 43, stranded on the way back from a pilgrimage to Damascus told the Cyprus Mail that the General Manager of the airport, Yiannis Papastefanou, took control of the situation personally and arranged air-conditioned accommodation for the stranded passengers with camp beds loaned from Civil Defence.
The group includes five elderly and infirm people in wheelchairs, children and 12 more elderly people who were in good health.
Of Papastefanou , Shabir Razvi, another member of the group said: “He is an angel I would say. The only thing is, I haven’t seen an angel who smokes. A smoking angel, haha,” he added. According to the passengers, Papastefanou stayed overtime to resolve their situation once the crisis broke and went to very great lengths to ensure they were all comfortable enough and well looked after.
“The airport authorities have done more for us than we were expecting: beds, foods, air conditioning. They have done the best they can,” said Masul Ramji, the leader of the group and a community leader back in the UK. His group formed part of a larger group of around 120 persons who were looked after by the airport authorities over this time period.
The group said that Cyprus Airways, with whom they flew, left them to fend for themselves after they arrived, expecting to simply catch an ongoing connecting flight.
According to Hermes spokesman Adamos Aspris, it would have been the airline’s responsibility to provide food for stranded passengers. Cyprus Airways was not immediately available for comment,
Another group of pilgrims, who were on their way back from Jeddah with a layover in Cyprus before their connecting flight back to the UK, were initially returned to their hotel when the air travel crisis broke. However, two days later, they were brought back to the airport and simply left there without any connecting flight because, they speculated, the airline did not want to continue to cover their hotel fees.
“Fifty members of Larnaca’s Civil Defence force transferred 120 camp beds, blankets, sheets and pillows, which were placed in two separate spaces set aside by Hermes airports to be used by foreign nationals. Furthermore, Civil Defence provided lunch, dinner, water and juices to the guests, and milk to the small children,” said Chrysilios Chrysliou, Director of Larnaca’s Civil Defence department.
The group were not however very impressed with how they were treated by the British High Commission,
“We’re not very pleased with the British High Commission, who did nothing to help us and sent us the lowest official they could find, who had no power to decide anything,” said Hamid Raza
“A Consular Assistant? You can’t find a lower one than that…it would have to be the cleaner,” he added.
Raza said that the only thing the British official did was to provide them with a Foreign Office helpline to call, “which nobody ever answered”.
