Minister of State for Interior Imtiaz Safdar Warraich on Tuesday told the National Assembly that the security forces and intelligence agencies were taking effective measures to curb human trafficking.
As many as 4999 cases had been registered against human traffickers while 2861 criminals had been awarded punishment during year 2011. He was responding to a calling attention notice raised by Raja Muhammad Asad Khan, Nisar Tanveer, Malik Shakir Bashir Awan, Sheikh Muhammad Tariq Rasheed and Shireen Arshad Khan about human trafficking in the country, causing grave concern amongst the public during the national assembly proceedings.
“Due to an effective role by Pakistan against human traffickers, our international ranking has been improved and we are now listed among those countries who have introduced good measures against human traffickers,” said the minister of state on interior.
Warraich said that Pakistan had a long bordering area scattered on thousands of miles on its western borders and effective measures were being taken to curb human trafficking. He said due to difficult terrain on the Pak-Afghan border, it was difficult to monitor the entire bordering area.
However, he said the human traffickers normally used Chamman border through which people used to travel to Afghanistan on legal documents. However, he added that the traffickers used to smuggle people from Afghanistan to Iran and other countries through illegal means and routes to Europe and rest of the world.
The minister said that during year 2011, 8344 inquiries had been registered against human smugglers and effective measures had been adopted to curb this menace. Lt. General (R) Abdul Qadir Baloch said that there was a dire need for the government to seal the road leading to Mand border where innocent people from Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were being butchered.
He alleged that the government had failed to provide security to its citizens. The minister also assured the house that former MNAs would be awarded government passports within a week’s time and he would himself hold talks with the DG-Nadra to ensure its implementation.
Earlier, on a point of order raised by Dr Abdul Qadir Khanzada, deputy speaker national assembly Faisal Karim Kundi had directed the chairman of rules and privilege committee to ensure that all the former members of the house are awarded passports in line with a resolution of the national assembly by Thursday.
Kundi said that disobedience to the orders of national assembly was tantamount to contempt of the parliament. He said that the DG of the Passports had refused to release passports for the former MNAs. He said the applicants had been issued cards but the passports had not been issued yet.
