Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: An International Non Governmental Organisation (INGO) working with special focus to improve health and education sectors has facilitated its foreign officials for field visits in a two cities of Pakistan without obtaining a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the foreign office in the country.

According to the documents available with Daily Times, the Plan International Pakistan provided its two foreign national employees Katharina Schluter from Germany and Frank Velthuizen from Netherlands. To avail such visits without getting NOC from foreign office was against the policy set by the Interior Ministry in 2015.

As per prescribed procedure, “If any foreign national wants to visit any part of the country, he or she has to take an NOC from the concerned security departments.”

The passport numbers under which the officials stayed in Pakistan were C74HOV2N of Katharina Schluter and NUOLH2HOO of Frank Velthuizen.

During their stay, these employees of the INGO also paid another visit to its field office located in Muzaffargarh, a part of southwestern Punjab which, as per documents, was also without NOC. In the documents, the organisation arranges tours of foreigners for the development activities to the country’s far-flung region. It further claimed that the activities are helpful to improve the basic necessities of life, particularly in health and education sectors. Moreover, during traveling, they also enjoyed all privileges to travel the sites of their interest which was also prohibited by the government.

In December last year, the country had ordered for closure of 27 INGOs from working in unauthorised areas and from spurring human rights campaigners to denounce swelling constraints on free speech and humanitarian work. The Plan International Pakistan was one of them.

However, in previous months, the Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal again allowed for functioning of these banned INGOs.

The documents stated that Schluter and Velthuizen were invited on a disability awareness workshop as trainers. After completion of the workshop, these officials started travelling to Lahore and Multan by road. According to its website, the Plan International Pakistan implements programmes and campaigns in 24 districts in five provinces of Pakistan using the Child Centred Community Development approach while it supports around 1.6 million children in 4,945 communities to access education, basic health care and nutrition, livelihoods, clean water, sanitation and protection. When contacted by Daily Times, the Plan International Pakistan Country Director Imran Yousaf Shami to get his version, he admitted that they failed to get an NOC for a field visit of these officials. However, he claimed that they informed the district administrator regarding the tour.

“We wrote a letter to the central police officer (CPO) in Multan about the visit along with travelling schedule,” he said in an email.

Imran Yousaf Shami further added that they had a copy of the application written to the CPO but did not have an NOC for the field visit of foreigners to Multan and Muzaffargarh. When contacted, Multan CPO Sarfaraz Ahmed Falki refused to comment over the issue.

Published in Daily Times, March 26^th 2018.