One can well imagine the misery of some 8,000 Pakistani expatriates stranded in Saudi Arabia for the past two months.
Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab blamed the war in neighbouring country Afghanistan.
Aftab, known for his funny remarks, was convinced that Afghan war was to be blamed for Pakistani passport being ranked second last in the Global Indexing Arton Capital Passport Index, held recently.
In the absence of federal minister for interior, who rarely shows up in the Senate and his deputy the state minister for interior, Aftab had to respond to a calling attention notice moved by four leading senators from the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). To his luck, only Saleem Mandviwalla was in attendance.
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The movers of the notice - Senator Farhatullah Babar, Farooq Hamid Naek and Karim Ahmed Khawaja - were absent from the proceedings. Their absence saved the government from a possible grilling.
Aftab told the Senate that there were only five countries in the world where Pakistanis could travel without getting a prior visa. Situation was equally bad for official Pakistani passports-red and blue.
Red passports are issued to diplomats and blue to government officials like lawmakers. Only 39 countries allow red passport holders from Pakistan to enter into their country without a visa while Pakistanis having blue passports can travel to 27 countries without a valid visa. Minister did not provide the list of countries that provide Pakistani nationals this relaxation.
“We have been victims of terrorism since the Afghan war. Once law and order improves, value of our passport will also increase,” the minister remarked.
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Labourers deported
An equally despondent response came from Minister for Law Zahid Hamid while responding to another calling attention notice by a Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) member Col (retd) Tahir Mashhadi who wanted to know the situation of Pakistanis being deported from Gulf countries, especially from Saudi Arabia.
Around 40,000 Pakistani labourers have been deported from Saudi Arabia, the MQM senator believed.
The minister could not provide specific numbers of those deported from Gulf countries, but provided some information on the impact in the shape of declining overall remittances by overseas Pakistanis, particularly from Saudi Arabia.
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According to the minister, during the first nine months of the ongoing financial year the country faced an overall 2.3 percent decrease in remittances. Remittances from Saudi Arabia witnessed a 6.1 percent decrease during this period, he added. Similarly demand for Pakistani laboruers has also witnessed a declining trend as 11 percent lesser labourers went to Gulf countries in 2016 as compared with the previous year, he added.
Gas supply
PPP’s Sherry Rehman warned the government of growing sense of deprivation among the smaller provinces.
Speaking on a point of order, she referred to the issue of politically motivated gas schemes mainly for Punjab and regretted that a major chunk of development projects in the election year was reserved for Punjab.
She also mentioned media reports that all the medical scholarships offered by Turkey were being given to favourites in Punjab.
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She also criticised what she called a flawed foreign policy of the incumbent government and observed that the case of Pakistan – a country aspiring for peace – was not being properly fought. “It is shameful and shocking that we are called jingoist,” she remarked.
Mir Kabeer of the National Party said natural gas was discovered in Dera Bugti in 1952, but lamented that 90 percent of Balochistan was still deprived of gas facility. The situation of gas in Sindh was equally alarming, he said and added that this is why the Sindh chief minister threatened to stop gas supply to other provinces.
Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani asked the secretariat to convey to the minister of state for petroleum to appear on Friday (today) to respond to the issue of gas supply to Sindh. “This issue needs to be looked at,” he remarked.
PPP parliamentary leader Taj Haider once again raised the issue of enforced disappearance of close aides of former president Asif Ali Zardari’s.
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