KARACHI, May 12: As many as 1,117 deported jobseekers reached here on Thursday by two cargo launches. More than 4,500 Pakistanis have been deported from Muscat during current year alone. The jobseekers, a majority of them illiterate, had been smuggled to the Gulf through Taftan. They reached Iran by crossing the Pak-Iran border illegally near Mand Ballu. They paid between Rs5,000 and Rs15,000 to human smugglers.

Dirt was on their faces, and they remained in prison for several days before they were crammed into Al-Fanan and Al-Mohammedi, which had no life-boats or life jackets.

The deported jobseekers, most of whom bare-foot, did not have any personal belongings or luggage except for the emergency passports, issued by the Pakistani mission in Oman.

The deportees, mainly hailing from the interior Sindh and Punjab, had to wait for hours to get through the immigration process, though a strong contingent of FIA Immigration and Passport Circle staff was deputed at Ghas Bandar.

The Ansar Burney Trust (ABT) provided food and clothes to the deportees after their release by the FIA.

According to deportees, they travelled in the batches of 22 each for two days to reach an Iranian border town. After an overnight stay, they were taken to another town in two days. Afterwards, they were taken to a jetty where they were made to travel in launches.

After a 10-hour sail, they were abandoned in the coastal area near Muscat, where authorities arrested them and sent them to jail.

Sarim Bureny of the ABT told Dawn that the trust shifted two sick deportees to the hospital. He said Adam son of Mohammed Ibrahim, who was in his late 20s, had been suffering from epilepsy and Kamran Ali, 37, had some cardiac problem.

He said as many as 527 deportees arrived on Al-Fanan and the remaining on Al-Mohammedi.