The Pakistan Repatriation Council (PRC) joins overseas Pakistanis in the Kingdom in welcoming the peaceful conduct of the recent elections in Pakistan and congratulate Nawaz Sharif on assuming the premiership of the new government. The new government faces huge challenges — corruption, inflation, rising social unrest, energy crisis, sagging economy, IMF debts, inter-provincial issues, Kashmir and the repatriation of stranded Pakistanis.

The PRC takes this opportunity to urge Sharif to reactivate the Rabita Trust, which was frozen by Gen. Pervez Musharraf in 2001 and restart all the activities related to repatriation and rehabilitation of stranded Pakistanis that have been on hold since then.

In 1988 land for the rehabilitation was allocated and in 1993 thousands of housing units were constructed. However, only 350 people were repatriated and most of the constructed houses are still lying vacant. If reactivated, the Rabita Trust, which has its own fund, can restart the process of construction of the remaining housing units and can arrange the repatriation beginning with 3,000 destitute families initially (without any male members) who have already been issued ID cards and were promised to be repatriated that year.

Due to the sacking of the Sharif government in 1993, and again in 1999, the process of repatriation was stopped.

PRC prays for the success of Sharif and his government and especially for the resolution of this humanitarian issue of stranded Pakistanis with the assistance of Muslim World League. PRC has also earlier submitted to him a proposal “settlement of stranded Pakistanis on self-finance basis,” which can solve the fund issue.

PRC members — Dr. Irfan Hashmi, Abdul Qayyum Wasiq, Engr. Ghazanfar Hassan, Shamsuddin Altaf, Syed Aslam Tanweer, Mohammad Amanatullah, Haroon Khalid, Riaz Ahmed and Burhan Siddiqui — extend their good wishes to Sharif government and hope he will take Pakistan out of the current crises. — Syed Ehsanul Haque, Jeddah