ISLAMABAD: Senator Usman Kakar has said that the drug and human trafficking mafia is operating openly across the country and no one seems to take action against them because some of these mafia members are part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Assembly and Balochistan Assembly.
He expressed these views during meeting of Senate functional committee on human rights held under Chairmanship of Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar.
Senator Kakar, who also hails from Balochistan, said that drug dealers have always remained part of provincial houses, and this heinous practice seems to be continued even now.
”They are doing their businesses valiantly while no state institution, including ministry of interior or foreign office can take any kind of action stop this”, said the senator. “Not only this, but America put a series of such names on its grey list and intimated Pakistani government regarding this but the government did nothing over this important issue”, senator Kakar regretted.
Citing examples of some countries where action against such mafias has been taken, the senator said “Even our neighbouring country Iran has taken very strict action against drug dealers but unfortunately we have failed to take this issue seriously”
While briefing the committee on another agenda item of Pakistanis imprisonments abroad, foreign Office (FO) official said that currently around 11000 prisoners are in various jails across the world while many of them are accused for drug smuggling cases. The FO official claimed that the ministry planned to get release of 161 people detained in international jails and for this purpose a handsome amount of money was required to deposit it to respective country’s government. “After preparing an initial draft of around $4 Million in October last year, the ministry sent it to former prime minster for his approval while the PM given wetted the summary accordingly but finance division is making hurdles since then and did not release amount so for”, he explained.
The FO said that the statements surrounding that Pakistan is not providing any legal assistance to these prisoners are totally fallacious. “Pakistan provided legal assistance to the people under imprisonment in Turkey. In the result, the Turkey government released around 30000 Pakistanis last year”, official claimed.
He maintained that as per the record FO obtained, around 90 Pakistanis deceased during travelling from Lebanon to Italy in accent of boat sinking, 70 of them could be identified exactly and FO handed over their dead bodies to the respective families while 20 remained unidentified. While responding to a query from a lawmaker, FO official said that there are two types of legal counsels which the foreign office hires, contractual as well as on case to case basis. The official suggested that the migration laws also needed to be implemented.
The committee members including Chairman of Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar were annoyed over absence of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Karachi Electric (KE) as he was called to brief the committee regarding a public petition of a father whom 7 years old son Umer lost both arms due to electrocution in Ahmadabad area of Karachi. The electric shot allegedly occurred due to KE negligence.
The committee directed to IG Sindh to issue arrest warrants of the CEO and present him before the committee meeting scheduled for today (Tuesday) at 2 Pm. The lawmakers said that the house would continue its legal action against KE officials until complainant gets satisfied.
Umer father alleged that incident occurred due to total negligence of the KE, adding that its officials never bothered to consult me.
“I’m unable to process the case in Pakistani courts, I need only justice for my son”, he said in trembling voice. He pointed out that the KE administration did not even admit the incident as ‘negligent mistake’. The KE official ensured the committee that the maximum compensation would be given to the aggrieved. The lawmakers said that that the purpose of this committee is to resolve the public issues.
Published in Daily Times, September 18th 2018.