3,240 Pakistanis still in Saudi jails, Shah Mehmood Qureshi

ISLAMABAD: A total of 3,240 Pakistani nationals are still languishing in the prisons of Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi informed the National Assembly’s session on Thursday.

The report titled ‘Migration, Remittances, and Imprisonment: Migrant workers and the plight of Pakistanis in Saudi Arabia’s Prisons’ was published on Monday.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi said a total of 2,080 Pakistani prisoners were set free by Saudi authorities in the wake of an announcement by Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman in this regard during his visit to Pakistan last year.

According to the details, In 2015, at least 8,597 Pakistanis were imprisoned in 63 countries, revealed the official stats by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The number soared to 10,896 prisoners in 28 countries in 2020, according to a news report by Daily Pakistan sourced in the report.

The highest number of prisoners is in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, the report said.

More than 57 per cent of Pakistanis imprisoned abroad are serving their sentences and can be brought back through prisoner transfer agreements. The lack of adequate consular assistance results in harsher sentences for these prisoners, the JPP report added.

90,000 Pakistanis secure overseas jobs in 2020 so far

Earlier, 90,000 Pakistanis have secured jobs in multiple fields of international labor market during the first 40 days of 2020.

According to the details, the Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development has facilitated 90,000 Pakistanis to get overseas jobs and 63 per cent growth in manpower export observed as compare to previous year.

A senior officer in the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment (BEOE) told Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) that this is a good start for ‘2020’ and it seems that we will accomplish the target of 750,000 set for the current year.

The foreign remittances, sent by Pakistani expatriates, were a potential source of boosting the country’s forex reserve (FER), he added.