The Ministry of Interior has revealed that the UAE is not issuing visas to ordinary Pakistani citizens.
A meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights was held under the chairmanship of Chairperson Samina Mumtaz Zehri, in which Interior Ministry officials said that at present the UAE is not issuing visas to Pakistanis and visas are being issued only to diplomatic and blue passport holders.
According to officials, Pakistani passports have been banned and if the ban had been imposed, it would have been extremely difficult to remove it.
Interior Ministry officials told the committee that 21,647 Pakistanis are imprisoned in 61 countries and most of them are involved in minor crimes such as overstay, identity fraud and bank fraud.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, missions have data on 90 percent of cases and most countries release ordinary prisoners on the occasion of Eid.
In the meeting, the Interior Ministry made another serious revelation that more than 500,000 Afghan citizens were residing abroad on Pakistani passports and some of them even participated in crimes by posing as Pakistanis, which Pakistan had to bear the loss.
Officials said that NADRA has digitized the data of all citizens so that such incidents can be prevented in the future.
The Secretary of the Interior Ministry said that 93 percent of Pakistan’s workforce going abroad goes to the Gulf and about 800,000 Pakistanis are currently working there. He revealed that large human trafficking networks are active in different districts of Punjab, which charge 43 to 50 lakh rupees from the youth and push them on dangerous and illegal routes.
The Chairperson Committee expressed serious concern over the increasing trend of human trafficking and said that it is necessary to make the public aware of its dangers, but awareness campaigns in airports and cities are non-existent.
The committee directed the relevant agencies to launch an immediate awareness campaign against human trafficking, improve consular facilities for Pakistanis abroad and take comprehensive measures to prevent identity fraud.
In addition, serious revelations were made in the meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights regarding gender-based violence in the country, human trafficking, problems of Pakistanis abroad and misuse of identity documents.
In the meeting, Senator Sherry Rehman said that 70 percent of cases of gender-based violence in the country are not reported, while the conviction rate in reported cases is only 5 percent.
According to her, the conviction rate in rape cases is only five percent, and in domestic violence cases it is zero. One percent. She said that despite 480 gender-based courts, the results are not satisfactory and women who report face severe obstacles.