PESHAWAR, Sept 18: More than 200 Afghans have managed to go abroad on Pakistani passports in connivance with the registered overseas recruitment promoters and immigration officials, sources told Dawn here on Thursday.
The registered employment promoters had been sending Afghans abroad since long by replacing the job-seekers pictures on passports with those of the refugees, they said.
From mid-February to date, the overseas job promoters had sent illegally over 200 Afghans to the Gulf states on green passports for huge amount of money, they added.
“We receive complaints from job-seekers daily. We have conducted an inquiry and found the overseas recruitment agencies guilty of sending Afghans abroad,” officials at the regional office of the Bureau of Immigration and Overseas Employment (BIOE) told Dawn .
After the inquiry, they claimed, the bureau had imposed a ban on 16 overseas employment promoters as a punishment for causing loss to the exchequer under the head of remittances.
“But five promoters were again allowed by the director-general in Islamabad to continue their work, though they were guilty of violating the Immigration Ordinance,” they said.
The five registered promoters are included: Bannu Overseas Recruitment Agency, Badhber Recruitment Agency, Khilji Recruitment Agency, Marghuz Recruitment Agency and Al-Kaseem Recruitment Agency.
The officials said that almost half of the complainants had withdrawn their cases after receiving Rs20,000 to Rs25,000 from job promoters as “compensation of their stolen passports”.
“We are authorized only to investigate allegations levelled by Pakistani job-seekers and put all cases with our investigation reports before the final authority— the director-general in Islamabad,” they maintained.
The immigration officials were also working hand in glove with the registered promoters as they failed to stop the Afghans from travelling on Pakistani passports, despite having facilities at airports to detect such cases, they said.
Syed Sabir Shah, a rickshaw driver, and his brother Syed Wahid Shah, residents of Khazana, on the outskirts of the city, told this reporter that seven months ago they had handed over their passports to Hamood Recruitment Agency in Peshawar which promised to get them jobs in a medicine company in Saudi Arabia.
“The promoters have our medical check-up conducted, but now they are giving evasive reasons for a delay in processing our cases,” they alleged.
The brothers said they also lodged complaints with the BIOE regional office, but the authorities did nothing to get back their passports.
They had even appeared in person before BIOE Director-General Mohammad Ibrahim Khan and he called an executive of Hamood Recruitment Agency to Islamabad, they claimed and added: “But it proved a futile exercise.”
“Now the promoters are offering Rs7,000 for each passport as compensation, saying that they will also register a daily report with any of the police stations about the missing of passports, which will help people get new passports,” they maintained.
According to the sources, the registered promoters have also involved jewellers of Chowkyadgar in their illegal business and they work as guarantors of the money paid to the promoters for sending the Afghans to their desired country.
“In most of the cases, the agreed money is submitted to one of these jewellers and when the aspirant reached his desired destination, the money is paid to the promoter,” they said.