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| Pakistanis were forced to work in Iraq, reveals Senate report |
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Wednesday, March 05, 2008
By Rauf Klasra
ISLAMABAD: Pakistanis recruited to work in Kuwait were secretly forced to work in war-torn Iraq, a Senate committee report has revealed.
The report said some foreign recruiting agencies had hired desperate and jobless Pakistani nationals in the name of giving them jobs in Kuwait but subsequently they were pressurised to serve in Iraq.
The report is the first to be released by the Senate standing committee on labour, manpower and overseas Pakistanis.The report also details secret proceedings of its previous meetings held during the last two years.
According to the report, in one of the recent meetings at the Parliament House, it was disclosed that some recruitment agencies had frequently taken many Pakistanis to Iraq after hiring them for work in Kuwait.
The prominent members of the committee are Naeem Hussain Chattha, (chairman), Kalsoom Perveen, Senator Enver Baig, Fauzia Wahab, Raza Mohammad Raza, Tariq Azeem, Sahibzada Khalid Jan, Naseer Mengal, Ilyas Bilour, Rashid Ahmed Khan and others.
Talking to The News, Senator Enver Baig confirmed that the committee had issued a report containing all the details of the previous meetings. He had even grilled officials of the Ministry of Labour and Manpower and wondered how it all could happen with the Pakistanis. Baig wanted to know the names of those national and international firms which had actually recruited the innocent Pakistanis.
The secretary of the ministry told the committee that this startling report had come to the knowledge of the ministry and afterwards a ban was imposed on the Kuwaiti firm not to recruit manpower from Pakistan.
The secretary also told the meeting that to avoid such incidents in future, the government of Pakistan had decided to take undertakings from all Kuwaiti international firms that the Pakistani workers would not be sent to Iraq.
Baig advised the Ministry of Labour to take appropriate measures so as to check the declining trend in export of manpower which adversely affected our remittances. He also quoted one press report which gave alarming fall in the remittances to Pakistan.
On this occasion, the report said, the secretary Ministry of Labour informed the committee that the federal minister had visited Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain as a special envoy of prime minister to resolve the issue.
Senator Ms Sameen Siddiqui opined that one of the reasons behind the decline could be cheap labour from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, etc. The secretary also informed the committee that there was restriction on our females to work in the Gulf as household workforce.
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Three killed as Sh Rashid escapes attempt on life
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briefs...
20 die in Afghan floods, avalanches
KANDAHAR: Twenty people have died in floods and avalanches triggered by some of the heaviest rain and snow in Afghanistan for 50 years, an official said on Monday. At more |
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ISSN 1563-9479 
