Jakarta sends body of boat tragedy victim
One body, out of the alleged 90 Pakistani victims of a boat tragedy in November off Indonesia, was brought back to Quetta on Monday for burial services.
Twenty-year-old Sayed Kefyat Hussain, who was a schoolteacher’s son and on his way, along with other illegal immigrants, to Australia in search of better economic opportunities when the boat capsized, was buried at a graveyard on Alamdar Road.
According to officials, the victims who were Pakistani nationals did not possess valid travel documents and instead were carrying Afghan passports. Most of the victims of the tragedy belonged to the Shia Hazara community and were illegally immigrating to Australia with no authentic documents in their possession at the time of the incident.
Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) Assistant Director Relief Faisal Naseem said that most of the bodies are mutilated beyond recognition.
“The elders of the Hazara community informed us that 90 people of Quetta were among the victims but only 42 families approached the cell set up to bring back the bodies. Half of the families submitted fake national identity cards (CNICs) and were Afghan nationals, making it hard for officials to bring back the bodies,” Naseem said.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 31st, 2012.
COMMENTS (1)
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If opportunities for the unemployed youth are made available abroad through legal channels, I doubt that people will go to a foreign country illegally.
Ministry of Labouor and Manpower should work hard to obtain jobs in foreign countries, if the unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled cannot be accommodated in the Pakistan.
What we need to do is to eliminate the culture of middlemen who take undue advantage from the situation and grab the opportunity to take exorbitant amount of money from unemployed people of Pakistan for arranging jobs and getting the work permits.
It is a very sad situation which the sitting government must address.