Says curbs on travelling of beggars, illegal migrants; NA committee orders promulgation of clear SOP
Inspector General of Police Sindh Riffat Mukhtar. PHOTO: FILE
ISLAMABAD:
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has revealed before a parliamentary panel that it off-loaded 66,154 passengers this year to curb organised gangs of beggars and illegal immigrants from travelling abroad.
“The spike in off-loadings is multi-faceted,” the FIA director general Riffat Mukhtar told the National Assembly Standing Committee on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development, chaired by Syed Rafiullah on Wednesday.
The meeting was called to examine the growing phenomenon of passengers being prevented from boarding flights as well as the role and performance of the Community Welfare Attaché (CWA) network in protecting Pakistanis abroad.
During the meeting, the DG FIA briefed the committee on operational realities at ports of exit.
The FIA director general clarified that 51,000 of these individuals were stopped due to questionable veracity of their travel documents falling into three main categories: work visas, tourist visas, and Umrah visas.
He highlighted that illegal migration and begging rings are severely damaging Pakistan’s international image. He reported that 56,000 beggars were deported from Saudi Arabia while the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had also imposed visa restrictions in view of the phenomenon.
Mukhtar said illegal migration trends had been observed toward Africa, and even on tourist visas to countries like Cambodia and Thailand. The FIA official defended the stringent measures as necessary to curb human trafficking and protect Pakistan’s international standing.
He noted that the surge in offloading is a countermeasure against fraudulent migration rings, revealing that 56,000 individuals involved in organized begging were recently deported from Saudi Arabia.
He pointed to growing restrictions from the UAE and emerging illegal migration routes toward Africa and Europe as drivers for the heightened vigilance.
The committee members welcomed the enforcement work but emphasized that enforcement must be paired with an accessible redressal channel so that genuine travellers who are wrongly off-loaded may obtain rapid relief.
It directed the FIA and the Ministry of Interior to finalize, publish and operationalize a clear SOP for off-loading and an airport-visible complaints mechanism.
The panel was told that a risk-analysis unit has been created and an “IMMI” mobile application is being developed to improve pre-departure screening and real-time monitoring of immigration counters.
The members urged immediate interoperability between FIA systems and the Protectorate/E-Protector platform so that verification and “ok-to-board” checks are done before passengers reach the airport counter.
The chair stressed that the public must be informed of how a passenger may challenge an off-loading decision and that contact details and an online complaint form be displayed at all airports.
Community Welfare Attaché (CWA)
The ministry presented the CWA network briefing.
The members were given a full account of the legal basis for CWAs, the merit-based selection process, KPIs and the ministry’s expansion plan to restore and add CWA wings at priority stations.
The committee took detailed note of the Gulf-region returns: CWAs reported collectively handling over 55,000 welfare cases in 2025, including more than 30,000 assisted repatriations/ETDs, 3,400+ death-related interventions and thousands of prison-visits and legal-aid interventions.
The committee welcomed these achievements but also recorded persistent operational constraints — passport confiscation by employers, employer resistance to dues recovery, host-country legal limitations, language barriers and weak outreach to remote labour camps.
It stressed that these constraints must be addressed through bilateral engagement and strengthened in-mission capacity.
On the Gulf-region performance, the members highlighted noteworthy outcomes — rapid issuance of Emergency Travel Documents, targeted repatriations, and coordinated legal support — while pressing for better prevention (pre-departure orientation and contract validation), improved employer engagement, and a dedicated legal-aid panel in mission posts to speed judicial remedies.
The committee directed the ministry to provide full, station-wise performance returns for each CWA in the Gulf including case-level summaries, staff rosters and resourcing requests and to table a prioritized plan for the next ten new stations envisaged in the presentation.
