The Kerala government has on Friday said that the services offered to guest workers will not be extended to expatriates who have returned to the state.

The order was issued by the Department of Non-Resident Keralites Affairs (NORKA) Secretary K Elangovan.

The development came in wake to a series of petitions filed at the High Court urging the state government to let expatriates avail institutional quarantine facilities. The court had sought a response from the government.

The NORKA official said that the matter was studied at length and it wasn't in the scope of the government's activities for now.

Guest workers are given free travel and quarantine facilities on the directive of the Supreme Court.

Earlier, the Kerala government had made COVID-negative certificates necessary for expatriates returning to Kerala.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday said a negative certificate was compulsory even while conceding that there were difficulties in conducting RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction) tests in many Gulf countries.

This insistence has already derailed the return plans of thousands of Malayalis stuck abroad and desperate to get back home.