Additional Home Secretary Salman Chaudhry said on Thursday that the United Arab Emirates had not been issuing visas to Pakistanis.
Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates share close diplomatic, economic and cultural ties. The United Arab Emirates is one of Pakistan’s largest trading partners in the Middle East and a major source of remittances, with a large population of Pakistani expatriates living and working there.
The secretary made this revelation during a meeting of the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights, further stating that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates “stopped short of imposing a ban on the Pakistani passport.”
“If a ban is imposed, it would be difficult to remove it,” he warned.
The official said the UAE currently only issues visas to blue and diplomatic passport holders.
On the other hand, Senator Samina Mumtaz Zehri, who heads the Senate human rights committee, also confirmed that the Interior Ministry official’s statements to Sunrise. He said the ban was attributed to concerns about people traveling to the UAE and “engaging in criminal activities”.
The committee was told that the UAE was not issuing visas to Pakistanis and that very few had been issued in the recent past “after many difficulties”, he said.
More to follow
