Pakistan to take up students’ visa issue with China

Pakistan will take up the unresolved visa-related issues of students with Chinese authorities to ensure continuation of their education in the host country, a federal minister has said.

The development came after Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development Sayed Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari on Saturday took notice of their complaints, lodged at different forums.

In a news release, Bukhari said he had also instructed his ministry to arrange travel for the students enrolled in different universities of China.

This would be carried out in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other relevant departments.

He urged the students intending to go back to register themselves at a link shared by his ministry at its official social media pages available at Twitter and Facebook.

The disease called Covid-19, which is caused by novel coronavirus, first emerged in central Chinese province of Hubei in December last year and since then it has spread worldwide and affected nearly 20 million people.

Scores of Pakistani students returned from China because of the epidemic. They were unable to go back to China to pursue their degrees in the wake of air travel ban. Now, with significant decline in the number of Covid cases in Pakistan, the government has allowed international flights.

The ministry said in a tweet on Saturday that it was in process to collect the data about the students.

“STUDENTS FLIGHT: SAPM @sayedzbukhari has instructed #mophrd to arrange travel of Pakistani Students enrolled in China. We are collecting names of students stuck in Pakistan to arrange their travel. Please submit details to be enlisted in flight. https://bit.ly/PkStudentsinCN,” it said.

Earlier, Bukhari wrote on the microblogging website: “Pakistani students who‘ve been waiting to go back to China to continue their education, please register yourselves on the given link,” he said. “I will also be taking up the unresolved visa issues with relevant authorities.”

As per initial reports, there were a number of students, businessman and workers, who were repatriated during the Coronavirus relief operation, had been waiting for their return to China. Most of them had been stuck in Pakistan due to visa-related issues, the ministry said.

WITH INPUT FROM APP, NEWS DESK