More than 300,000 Pakistanis languishing in Bangladesh since the breakup of Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh are not only in a pathetic state but have become stateless, according to Mahmood Khan who is here to perform Umrah. "They are being used as a vote bank by Bangladeshi politicians during elections with a promise to make them citizens if not repatriated. On the other hand, Pakistan is making no efforts to seek their repatriation," Khan, son of the late Naseem Khan, founder of the Stranded Pakistanis General Repatriation Committee, told Arab News in an interview.
Thanking Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah for sending 200,000 kg of dates for the stranded Pakistanis this year, Mahmood Khan has proposed that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani should facilitate the issuance of Pakistani passports to 37,000 male members among the stranded Pakistanis through the Bangladesh High Commission and request King Abdullah to issue work visas for them. This will enable them to lease houses and bear expenses of family tickets through their earnings. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states still need labor for their mega projects.
The Islamic Development Bank and Pakistan's banks should also be approached to build houses for them in Punjab where free land was allocated for their rehabilitation in 1988, Mahmood Khan emphasized. He had a word of praise for IDB president Ahmed Mohammed Ali for providing the stranded people with sacrificial meat during every Haj season. He pointed out that schools and clinics, which were running at the camps since 1978 under the Muslim World League's subsidiary International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), were stopped two years ago since their bank accounts in Bangladesh were frozen. He also said that wheat distributed since 1973 to the stranded people, was stopped in 2004. He urged Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed to restore wheat distribution and also provide basic facilities like health, education and security to them until their repatriation.
He urged the Pakistani government to reactivate the Rabita Trust, include Bangladesh's representation on it and implement PRC's self-finance proposal for their repatriation and rehabilitation without any liability on either the Pakistani government or MWL.
Referring to the services rendered by his father Naseem Khan during the 1947 freedom movement, and for siding with the Pakistani army in the 1971 war and later at the camps of stranded Pakistanis where he held the Pakistan flag high, Mahmood Khan urged that his father, who died on Aug. 28, 2005, should be decorated with Pakistan's civil award. "My father lived among the stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh camps hoisting the Pakistani flag and died a patriotic Pakistani," he said.