ISLAMABAD: During the last two years, 12,235 illegal Pakistani immigrants were deported by the European countries.

This was stated by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan in a written reply to a question by Senator Mohammad Azam Khan Swati in the Senate on Tuesday.

The minister said the government had taken measures to address the issue of human rafficking/smuggling, including regulating by the immigration wing of the FIA the movement of international passengers at the notified border crossing - air, sea and land.

Anti-human circles have been established in five FIA zonal directorates to investigate and prosecute illegal immigrants/travelers, he stated, adding efforts were also made to arrest/apprehend and deport/repatriate the most wanted traffickers and human smugglers.

Moreover, the FIA initiated a countrywide crackdown on human smugglers and traffickers and the agency was making efforts for apprehending agents, facilitators and masterminds of illegal immigrants and rackets involved in such heinous crimes. The results of this special campaign are very encouraging, he added.

Replying another question by Senator Mohammad Talha Mahmood about the criteria laid down for the renewal of arms licences of prohibited and non-prohibited bore, the minister said Nadra issued one-year computerised arms licences in lieu of the manual licences.

The manual licence and record of the applicant is forward to the Ministry of Interior for verification, which conveys its verification to Nadra through the online system.

Nadra renewed and verified arms licences for five years, he stated. The applicant approaches the designated Nadra centre along with his expired licence for renewal and Nadra issues him a computerised token.

After the processing period of three weeks, Nadra issues the renewed arms licence with five years’ validity. The applicant’s old expired licence is retained for destruction.

He added that so far 149,825 prohibited/non-prohibited bore computerised arms licences had been renewed/revalidated. However, during the tenure of the present government, 105,012 arms licences were renewed for five years and there was no pending case.

Published in Dawn October 5th, 2016