Only a handful of workers from the southern Indian state of Kerala have shown interest in the free plane ride home being offered by the state government.

Only 110 of the 450,229 Kerala-born expats residing in Saudi Arabia have registered their names to return home through state government funding. On Tuesday, 53 Kerala workers left with tickets provided by the Kerala government.

“We have provided free tickets to 54 persons in Jeddah, 8 in Dammam and 31 in Riyadh to return home,” Shihab Kottukad, general consultant of NORKA, the Kerala state government organ that looks after its expats abroad, told Arab News on Wednesday.

He said: “We had earlier planned to charter a flight, but having witnessed only a handful of applicants, the Kerala government decided to provide them free tickets instead.”

Shihab said that despite wide publicity, only a few people from Kerala came forward to avail of the free travel offer back home.

NORKA will continue, however, to register names of expatriates from Kerala who want to return home.

He said that K. C. Joseph, Kerala’s minister for the diaspora, is regularly monitoring the situation of expats that have since returned.

Thousands of Kerala expats have legalized their job status on their residency permits and only around 14,000 had returned home, he said.