ISLAMABAD, Sept 26: About 2,600 camel jockeys are still in the Middle East of whom 70 per cent (more than 1,800) are said to be Pakistani, State Minister for Overseas Pakistanis Tariq Azim Khan told Dawn on Monday.

He said Unicef would pay an amount of $3 million to Pakistan for repatriation and rehabilitation of the jockeys belonging to Pakistan.

He said a delegation of Unicef had arrived in the country to present the rehabilitation package under which the children would be rehabilitated and educated, imparted technical training and sent abroad on work visas after they reach the age of 18, the minister added.

Mr Khan said some 400 Pakistani children who were being used as camel jockeys had returned to the country as a result of the efforts of his ministry and the interior ministry.

He said of 2,600 camel jockeys in the United Arab Emirates, 70 per cent were Pakistanis and the rest belonged to India and Bangladesh.

The present government, he said, was committed to eliminate the menace of human smuggling, especially smuggling of children. He said the staff of immigration and passport and of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), deployed at airports, had been given the latest equipment to foil human trafficking attempts.

Meanwhile, Director General Immigration and Passport Brig (rtd) Khalid Habib has said that newly introduced machine readable passport had helped reducing the menace of human smuggling.

He said his department had set up 28 MRP centres in the country and 10 in missions in Dubai, Jeddah, London, Rome, Frankfurt, Oslo and Toronto.

Responding to a question about fake manual passports, he agreed that the problem had not been completely eradicated.

He said: “The introduction of MRP system has completely eliminated smuggling of children to Arab countries where they are used as camel jockeys because now every person has to come to the passport office to get his or her passport.”

He further said: “Earlier there was a practice that people used to avoid visiting passport offices. They would send their subordinates to get passports. But we have totally changed the system and now every applicant has to come to the passport office. Even President General Pervez Musharraf personally visited a passport office and soon the prime minister will also come to get his MRP.”