2.2 Failures in the Recruitment Process Abdullah, an iron factory worker from Narowal District, Pakistan, was imprisoned in Briman Jail, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 2012 on drug-related offences. Earning a meagre Rs.400 per day (USD 3) working at an iron factory, he heard about an employment opportunity in Saudi Arabia through a friend and decided to migrate. He sold his bike, the only transportation available to his family of nine, to raise money to pay an agent for his migration. Abdullah left for Saudi Arabia and his family did not hear from him for the next two months. Eventually, they discovered that he was imprisoned in Briman Jail after being arrested at Jeddah International Airport on charges of possessing prohibited drugs. The old bag that Abdullah had checked in at the airport in Pakistan on his flight to Saudi Arabia had been switched, his luggage tag fastened onto a new bag. His father told JPP that, “Abdullah had never gotten into any trouble before he went to Saudi Arabia. Since his departure, we have been having a tough time emotionally and financially. I am too old to earn enough money to run the family. I can’t see the face of my grandchild. Instead of having a father, she is like an orphan, and his wife is spending her life like a half-widow. I have no strength left to take legal action against those who defrauded my son.20 “We wrote appeals to then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, Rana Tanvir (a local Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan and, at the time, a government minister), as well as the media but have never received a single response or investigation into his case,” said Abdullah’s father Shabbir.21 Abdullah has been executed by Saudi authorities. There are three key failures in Pakistan’s recruitment regime that leave low-wage migrant workers like Abdullah exposed to the risk of being forced to smuggle drugs to the Gulf and losing their lives: • the illegal trading of overseas work visas known as ‘Azad Visas’, • inadequate enforcement of pre-departure briefing attendance requirements under Pakistani law, and • the failure to regulate subagents and other actors in Pakistan’s recruitment industry that lead to coercive and deceptive recruitment practices. These failures can have severe consequences for prospective low-wage migrant workers. In all of the cases documented for this report, workers had all of their relevant paperwork approved, their passports stamped by the Protector of Emigrant (a mandatory requirement without which a migrant cannot pass an airport). And yet none of the ten men who wound up being coerced and deceived into smuggling drugs to the Gulf ever came into contact with an official authority or were even aware of the legal visa process. According to the Procedure of Overseas Employment, an ‘Overseas Employment Promoter can retain passports of job seekers (in the process of recruitment) and shall maintain records in a Register.’22 With the passport and other documents in the hands of the OEP, the only point of contact a migrant worker has with a government official is at the pre-departure briefings which, as documented in this section, migrants regularly fail to attend. This lack of information about the process and the limited role migrants often play in their own migration process allows both OEPs and subagents to exploit individuals from the lower socioeconomic class. 9