THERE have to be better ways to handle the problem. New details have come to light regarding the recent surge in reports of passengers being denied boarding on planes travelling out of the country, with the DG FIA informing a National Assembly Standing Committee on Wednesday that more than 50,000 travellers have been stopped so far this year over “insufficient or unverified documentation”. “Passengers are offloaded on the basis of document verification, data checks, and online authentication,” DG FIA Riffat Mukhtar Raja told the committee, adding that “the immigration system is using artificial intelligence to identify suspicious cases in advance”. This should raise a flag. While the effort is said to be aimed at preventing Pakistani travellers who, in the interior minister’s words, “bring disrepute to the country”, it seems to involve excessive discretionary decision-making at immigration counters and reliance on unproven technologies known to harbour bias. This neither seems fair nor wise, more so when the definition of what may be deemed ‘insufficient’ documentation has not been made clear. No wonder there has been so much chaos at the country’s major airports.

It is also no wonder that the implementation of this very arbitrary vetting process seems to have opened new avenues for extortion. According to the DG FIA’s own admission during the aforementioned hearing, 180 FIA officials have been dismissed from service over involvement in corrupt practices. That is a staggering number. One wonders how many genuine passengers were inconvenienced and how many with fraudulent documents were allowed to slip away by such individuals. Then there is also the question of whether the entirety of the state’s efforts to prevent unscrupulous travellers from going abroad needs to be focused on immigration counters. Logically, the networks facilitating illicit travel arrangements are what should be the state’s primary target. Given the thousands of cases the FIA has come across so far, it should not be too difficult to trace down culprits and hold them to task. The authorities should detail their progress in dismantling such networks, if there has been any. Once again, the intent is rational, and the authorities are on the right track, but the methods being employed to prevent abuse of travel privileges need reconsideration and calibration. Travel for unlawful purposes must be strongly discouraged, but genuine travellers should never face inconveniences at the last stage of departure.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2025