Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Sedef Dearing, senior regional adviser of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) on Silk Routes Project, said on Wednesday that human smugglers were exploiting uneducated and unskilled people through illegal immigration, which had become a flourishing trade worldwide.

In an exclusive interview to Daily Times, Dearing said that her organisation was working on the Silk Routes project, which covered Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Bangladesh. She said that her organisation was based in Vienna, Austria and it had been working for more than 20 years, mainly with governments, to improve capacity and policies in terms of migration all over the world.

“We have projects and other types of activities and cooperation with many countries, mainly in Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. We are also doing some work in South American countries. ICMPD performs duties in areas of border management, human smuggling and irregular migration in person trafficking. We also work on international protection issues related to asylum and refugees, migration and development,” she added.

In Pakistan, the organisation is working in collaboration with the ILO, EU and a couple of other countries. “We would establish three to five centres for provision of information regarding the protection of migrants. A centre has already been established in Islamabad.”

She said that her organisation would provide information to anyone who wanted to go abroad legally. “If the people know what is right for them, they will choose legal ways to go abroad. Opportunities for the educated and skilled youth are there, but now they are squeezing and becoming very limited.”

She said that unskilled and semi-skilled people were required in the Gulf and the Middle East and human smugglers were preying on them. She said these people would often lose their money to human smugglers and would be kept in precarious conditions. She said that people who went to Europe, Australia or any other country illegally through smugglers were facing a lot of problems there. She said that it was better to use legal means for migration to Europe, Gulf or elsewhere. They should know immigrant workers’ rights and laws for them so that nobody could exploit them.

Referring to the exploitation of the Pakistani workers by owners of the companies and the sponsors in the Middle East and the Gulf, Dearing said it was important that the person who goes abroad reads his employment contract carefully.

Some times companies abroad offer more, but pay less. She said that Pakistan had representation in all Gulf countries such as embassies and community welfare centres; therefore, the affected people should get help from these embassies. She said that nobody could confiscate a worker’s documents of identity such as passport. She said that workers of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka could cooperate with each other to protect their rights.

She said that people would dream of migration to Europe, Australia and other destinations. She said that people had the right to dream, but the situation in the countries of their dreams was not that encouraging. She said that sometimes people spend so much money to go abroad through agents. If they invest that money in their own country, they can earn more money than a Pakistani living abroad, she said.

On the treatment of refugees from Syria, Iraq and Yemen in Europe, Dearing said it was a very challenging situation and nobody was prepared to meet this challenge. She said it was not possible to stop migration. She said that migration was going to increase in future around the globe. She said that Europe was working on this issue, but it would take time to find a solution to this problem.