Sick and Elderly Indian Medical Visa Applicants Forced to Wait in Queue on the Street at Midnight

People on social media have expressed concern for the many India medical visa applicants who are forced to start queueing up on the street outside the Indian High Commission at midnight.

A picture of people sitting on the street outside the High Commission at midnight began circulating on social media, to which many people responded with anger.

One of the medical visa applicants told an online news-outlet that even though the application for the medical visa had been submitted through the Internet; they were still forced to physically present themselves at the High Commission to verify the authenticity of their paperwork. The man had said that it was difficult to submit the paperwork without waiting in queue for many hours.

A person who spoke to the news outlet had expressed their concern about the fact that the sick and the elderly were also forced to wait outside the High Commission in line. People who worked outside Malé City were also forced to come and wait in line, they said.

One applicant, writing on Facebook, said that they had joined the queue at 1am, but they had only received a token after waiting in queue for 8 hours, at 9am. They said that they had to wait several hours inside the Commission with their paperwork. Their ordeal came to an end at 2pm, some 13 hours later.

People on social media criticized the Indian government; they said that while the Maldivian government did everything asked of them by India, the aspiring superpower did nothing to make the suffering of Maldivians easier for them.