3.1 Inadequate Coordination Between State Authorities
In 2005, Shahid was approached by Muhammad Arshad Shah, a subagent, who offered him a job
in Saudi Arabia. However, Shahid told his father he had won tickets for himself and his mother
to travel to Saudi Arabia on Umrah (pilgrimage). The family had no idea who had made travel
arrangements for Shahid.
After Shahid paid Shah the necessary money for passport and visa processing, he was taken to
Mardan. There, Arshad gave Shahid an injection that made him very drowsy, hazy and semiconscious and in this state, he was forced to swallow heroin capsules and board a plane to Saudi
Arabia. “Shahid rang me from a prison in Saudi. He said there were many inmates from Pakistan
and they were cheated in the same way by agents offering an Umrah visit,” said Shahid’s wife
Razia Bibi.36 Shahid was executed in Saudi Arabia following a conviction on drug-related offences.
Inadequate coordination between the different state authorities responsible for aspects of the labour
migration process in Pakistan leads to poor enforcement of protections against trafficking. For example,
even when complaints are brought against individuals or agents, defendants have been known to simply
disappear, close office or simply not respond to show cause notices without facing any punishment from
state authorities. In the case of trafficking complaints against certain individuals such as those in the
FIA’s Red Book of Most Wanted Traffickers (2016), the OEPs that these individuals operated from are
not adequately investigated and continue to be licenced and operating. For example, Global Routes and
Travels has had several complaints against the licence owner of the company and an FIR is still open for
his arrest. Yet the recruitment agency is still fully functional and continues to send workers and others
abroad. The lack of coordination between the FIA and BEOE, or simple indifference clearly jeopardizes
the lives of Pakistani migrant workers seeking employment opportunities abroad.
The BEOE is responsible for overseeing the activities of its licenced OEPs, checking the validity of
migrant’s documents and briefing migrants on safety procedures and legal protocols in their destination
countries. It is the responsibility of the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment, as the formal
regulator and monitoring body for OEPs, to ensure accountability and that the worker is aware of the
process of migration and that those who are facilitating his migration are not causing him harm.
There are other actors that can also play a valuable role in providing relief to migrant worker prisoners
post-arrest. The Ministry of Interior, which administers the Anti Narcotics Force and presides over a
Ministry of Narcotics Control,37 has done little to ensure the apprehension of the actual organised criminal
networks behind the drug trafficking trade to the GCC. In the past three years, only one narcotics ring
associated with smuggling drugs to GCC countries has been dismantled, that too on the impetus of the
UAE police who identified, located and then demanded the arrest of a smuggler located in Pakistan.38
When the Ministry of Interior was contacted in relation to JPP’s litigation on the cases of migrant
workers arrested on drug smuggling charges, they requested that their name be removed from the
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