Visa problem delays departure, some athletes may miss events

NEW DELHI: A 30-strong Indian athletics squad could not depart from here on time for the Asian Junior Championships starting tomorrow in Taipei City with the chief coach claiming that a visa facilitating agency mistakenly sent the applications to Chinese Embassy.

VFS Global, to which the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) had outsourced the visa procurement work, mistakenly sent the applications to the Chinese Embassy apparently thinking that Chinese Taipei comes under China, according to chief coach J S Bhatia.

The 30 athletes and four officials were to leave for Chinese Taipei yesterday but they had to delay the departure by a day. They will now leave at 1am IST tomorrow.

"First of all, it is not the fault of AFI. VFS to which the AFI outsourced the visa procurement job was to be blamed. It sent the visa applications to Chinese Embassy on Friday last. The applications remained at the Chinese Embassy for four days. After the mistake was found out, we had to apply for the visas to the Chinese Taipei representative office," Bhatia told PTI.

"Luckily, the Chinese Taipei representative office cleared the visas in quick time. It took just a couple of days. We got the visas today and we are leaving after midnight," he said.

The delayed departure may not be good news for some of the athletes as they are likely to miss their events or may have to take part within hours of their arrival in Taipei City. The events start at 8am at Chinese Taipei local time (5:30am IST) tomorrow.