AKIPRESS.COM - There are around 597 Mongolian Buddhist child monks and students living at three monasteries – Gomang, Sera and Jume in the Karnataka state of India, and 357 of them are children aged between 10 and 18, Montsame reports.

Upon requests by parents of 219 children there as well as the Gomang Monastery administration, the cabinet today ordered the Head of the State Emergency Commission U.Enkhtuvshin to organize the repatriation of the children from India.

A charter flight will be arranged to the region where the children are staying in as two COVID-19 cases have been detected 6 kilometres away from the monastery, putting the children at greater risk.

70 percent of 219 children to fly to Mongolia are originally from rural areas of Mongolia and parents had sought financial help from the government because they can afford to pay for the flight only, not the payment of isolation expenses.

Therefore, the government today decided to repurpose MNT 229.9 million from the Child Development and Protection Program for the isolation expenses of the children, and gave an order to the Minister of Labor and Social Protection to cooperate with the emergency commission to provide psychological counseling services for them.