- Pak nationals facing legal troubles ranging from registration of marriage, child births to issuance of CNICs, NICOPs, POCs
Although the Pakistani diaspora, who sends remittances of billions annually, has been a major source of the country’s foreign exchange, they are often maltreated due to the callous attitude of many babus serving in Pakistani missions abroad.
Thailand is one of those countries where Pakistanis reside in huge numbers, but the Pakistan embassy located in this peninsula has been humiliating its nationals instead of resolving their legal issues ranging from registration of marriage and child births to issuance of CNICs, NICOPs and POCs or renewal of passports.
The embassy is so far unable to even register the number of Pakistanis residing in Thailand and has never been able to develop a hotline between the Thai and Pakistan governments about the Pakistanis languishing in prisons which, according to one report, is the second highest anywhere in the world.
According to sources, the Pakistani mission has been humiliating the Pakistanis residing in Thailand on business or stuck there as a result of human trafficking.
They said the embassy had been reluctant even to meet with the innocent Pakistanis trapped in Thailand due to the travel agents and human smugglers. “These Pakistanis have not been issued out-passes to exit Thailand legally as their passports are in possession of the human smugglers operating in Pakistan,” added the sources.
The Embassy has never opted to crackdown on Pakistani human smugglers having their base in Bangkok and big-time access in Embassy, mainly from Gujranwala and Sialkot region.
The sources further said that the Pakistanis living in Thailand legally and sending foreign exchange to Pakistan were also the victim of the embassy’s callous attitude as they were having trouble registering their marriages, child births, renewing their passports and CNICs.
These Pakistani nationals were often misbehaved while a handful of so-called Pakistani business men enjoyed direct access to the embassy, added the sources.
They further said that recently when some Pakistanis approached the embassy for renewal of passports after the computerised passport machines were fixed in Bangkok’s mission, the embassy sent them back on a self-created excuse that the machines had a glitch just to favor some influential and renew their passports first.
Similarly, the officials in Thailand have complicated the process of acquisition of visas for Pakistani-origin Thais instead of easing the process to facilitate them.
Expressing severe anger and regret over the embassy’s behavior, Anwar Falo, a Thai-born Pakistani and once a renowned Thai model and advisor to TPFA, said that the Pakistanis and Pakistani origin Thais were planning to hold a massive protest in front of the embassy in Bangkok in the coming days against its callousness.
“I am sure a Pakistani would not be humiliated at an Indian Embassy the way he/she is humiliated at the Pakistan embassy,” he remarked as he deplored that only agents Anwar Khan and Raza had unrestricted access to the embassy but no one else.
Many Pakistanis settled in Thailand complained that while a new visa counselor sent to Thailand a month ago had yet to assume the charge, the third secretary, Kamran, misbehaved with them as if they were his servants.
They also complained that no complaint cell had been set up in the Pakistani mission where they could lodge their complaints.
When this scribe contacted, Foreign Office spokesperson Qazi M Khalilullah said the matter would be investigated and it would take a week or so to get a report from the Pakistani mission in Thailand.