A COUPLE of months ago, the company that I work for planned a visit to Dubai. A little more than 100 employees working for the finance and human resource departments of the company were to visit Dubai. The purpose of the trip was to hold a conference in the UAE, and to have some fun and enjoyment. The company got in touch with a tour operator so that hotel booking, transport and excursion trips could be arranged. In Pakistan, the trip was coordinated by the company’s travel agent who was also supposed to arrange travel tickets.
In October, 2004, the representative of the travel agent took our passports for scanning, something that’s needed to get visas from the UAE. After a few days, I wondered why the passports hadn’t been returned. I asked the travel agent. He said he had already returned the passport to me. I was surprised and got a bit worried. I wondered, what if my passport was lost? How could I get a new one in a short span of time as the visit was planned for Nov 25? When efforts made both by the travel agent and myself to find the passport failed, I was left with no choice but to have a new passport made on an urgent basis. Before I could visit Nadra office to initiate the process, I had to get an FIR registered with the police and a notice published in a newspaper regarding my passport’s disappearance. Nadra charged me Rs8,000 for insurance of a new passport on an urgent basis. Since these days passports are made in Islamabad, I received my new passport after seven days. I immediately handed it over to the travel agent to obtain a visa for me. The agent told me that visas issued for the previous passport would have to be cancelled by the immigration authorities in Dubai before a new one could be issued. So, the previous visa was submitted for cancellation to the authorities after Eid holidays in Dubai on Nov 20, 2004, but the authorities did not take any action on it till Nov 23. By then I had lost all hopes for proceeding to Dubai along with my colleagues on Nov 25.
Since my situation was quite embarrassing for the travel agent too, he made one last effort by requesting a Dubai-based airline to issue the much-required visa. The next day I woke up a bit disappointed as my colleagues were boarding a flight to Dubai at midday. At 11:00am, I was told by the travel agent that the airline was able to get the visa and that they had booked a seat for me on the flight that would take off at 10:30pm. Later I was told by the travel agent that the airline had asked for a bank guarantee of Rs1 million for arranging a one-week valid visa. The lesson that I learned by virtue of this whole saga was that one should always keep track of one’s important documents, and only hand them over to other people if it’s really necessary.
I could only have repented and cursed myself if the journey had not been undertaken as planned. The way I enjoyed my three-day stay in Dubai with junior and senior colleagues was simply out of this world. We enjoyed cruising, desert safari, a musical evening at the hotel, and did a lot of shopping, mostly in the huge and glamours city centre. For many of my colleagues it was the first time that they had visited abroad. Apart from morale-boosting, the visit left a significant impression on most of us. Memories of the trip will stay with us for a long time.
A COUPLE of months ago, the company that I work for planned a visit to Dubai. A little more than 100 employees working for the finance and human resource departments of the company were to visit Dubai. The purpose of the trip was to hold a conference in the UAE, and to have some fun and enjoyment. The company got in touch with a tour operator so that hotel booking, transport and excursion trips could be arranged. In Pakistan, the trip was coordinated by the company’s travel agent who was also supposed to arrange travel tickets.
