Illegal emigrants: Pakistani job seekers swindled in Libya

Islamabad to take up the matter with Tripoli.

Pakistan says it will take up with the Libyan diplomatic mission the issue of Pakistani job seekers tricked by recruitment companies in Libya and Pakistan.

Pakistan embassy in Tripoli recently unearthed an issue where Libyan and Pakistani recruitment firms cheated thousands of Pakistani job seekers, where they were not given jobs – as promised by the racketeers – since authorities gave them the status of illegal emigrants. Some Libyan embassy staffers were also allegedly involved in the visa racket.

“We have already received a complaint by the Pakistani ambassador in Tripoli in this regard,” Foreign office spokesperson Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry told The Express Tribune.

Chaudhry added that they will take up the matter with the Libyan embassy.



“Our next course of action on the issue will be decided after receiving a reply from the Libyan embassy.”

Apart from the Pakistani embassy in Tripoli, the Community Welfare Attaché of the Overseas Pakistanis Foundation (OPF) sent a separate complaint in this regard to the foreign affairs ministry and the director general of the Bureau of Emigration. In his letter, the attaché said that these job seekers are at the mercy of organised criminal gangs.

“There is hardly any Pakistani who is not subjected to the loot and plunder of the Libyan criminals,” the attaché wrote. He recommended an immediate stop to the export of Pakistani human resource to Libya for the time being.

Moreover, a senior official of OPF alleged that some diplomats in the Libyan embassy and Emigration officials of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) also facilitated the racket.

When contacted, Director General of FIA, Muhammad Anwar Virk, admitted that some people were indeed facilitated by FIA officials at airports.

“We have taken serious disciplinary action against all those officials, which includes the registration of criminal cases against them,” he said.

However, Virk categorically rejected allegations that ‘thousands’ of emigrants were unlawfully facilitated by FIA officials.

Libyan diplomats did not comment on the issue when contacted.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 1^st, 2013.