KARACHI, 11 December 2003 — A batch of 1,025 Pakistanis arrested for illegal entry and employment in the Gulf country of Oman returned home yesterday, and officials planned to question them on the human trafficking trade.
The illegal immigrants arrested over the past six months arrived in this southern city on two cargo ships after leaving the Oman capital of Muscat on Tuesday, said Mohammed Azam, an official in the Federal Investigation Agency, which deals with immigration issues in Pakistan. They were released after two-months jail term in various prisons in Oman.
FIA officials will question the deportees about human traffickers they may have paid to reach Oman before allowing them to go home, he said.
Human traffickers are suspected of smuggling people seeking jobs in the Middle East through Pakistan’s remote border regions with Iran. Some smugglers are believed to charge sums of up to 30,000 rupees ($600), a huge amount in Pakistan where nearly one-third of the nation’s 140 million people earn less than 750 rupees ($15) a month.
Majority of the deportees belong to Dera Ghazi Khan, Larkana, Bannu and Jacobabad.
Including those who reached home yesterday, 2,300 Pakistanis have returned from Oman over the past two months.
