KARACHI, April 5: As many as 337 worn-out jobseekers, deported from Muscat, were arrested by the immigration staff of the FIA at the Karachi port on Thursday. According to the immigration authorities, the jobseekers, almost all of them illiterate, were smuggled into the Gulf state via Taftan crossing near Mand Ballu.

They paid human traffickers different amounts ranging from Rs5,000 to Rs15,000.

They had remained in Muscat prison for several days before being crammed into the 113x30 feet cargo launch, Al-Mohammadi, which had neither lifeboat nor life jackets.

Exhausted by hunger and an extremely uncomfortable two-day voyage, the jobseekers reached here without any personal belongings or luggage. The deportees, most of them barefooted, were issued emergency passports by the Pakistani mission in Oman.

Ansar Burney Trust arranged food, drinking water, slippers and clothes for the deportees, hailing from different parts of the country.

Sarim Burney of the ABT, who was present at Ghas Bander to receive the deportees, said that the 337 deportees included two men who miraculously survived after their launch, carrying 20 jobseekers, capsized near Muscat waters.

“Survivors Hukum Khan and Zakhmat Khan, both hailing from the NWFP, told me that they managed to escape death by holding a floating drum for several hours while 18 others drowned,” he added.