Stateless Pakistanis: MRPs mandatory after 30th, Senate panel told

Expatriates without machine readable passport will not be allowed to travel

ISLAMABAD: Millions of Pakistanis abroad will face challenging times after the deadline for the machine-readable passports expires on September 30: that means from next month, expatriates without MRPs will not be allowed to travel.

“The issue of MRPs is a complex one,” Ministry of Interior Additional Secretary Aurangzeb Haque told the Senate Standing Committee on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development on Thursday.

Briefing the committee, he said PC-I had already been prepared and approved by Ecnec. “Out of 93 Pakistani embassies around the world, the MRP facility has been established in 83 embassies,” he assured the committee.

The secretary said the Foreign Office had proposed some additional missions to be facilitated with MRPs but later on withdrew the list.

The office had asked for five such stations in Afghanistan and one in Yemen, he added. Moreover, some cities in Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria and Africa were still lacking the facility. According to Haque, the stations that had not been covered had little presence of Pakistanis.

Foreign Office Additional Secretary Irfan Yousuf Shami asked for the MRP facility to be provided to the remaining 25 missions. He said he had written to the interior ministry repeatedly on the issue.

“You hardly have 15 to 20 days barring Eid break and weekends to meet the deadline in the remaining missions,” he observed. The remaining 25 embassies look after over 50 countries as one embassy is linked to over five countries.

Besides the establishment of MRP equipment in the remaining missions, he also proposed deputing mobile teams where the MRP facility was not established. The cost of a single MRP printer ranges from $15,000 to $20,000, the committee was told.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 2^nd, 2016.