Manpower import: Senate body calls to withdraw permission to suspected company

A Senate panel has recommended to the Overseas Pakistanis Ministry to immediately withdraw permission to a suspected shipping company of Netherlands for manpower import. The advice came during a meeting here on Tuesday after an official told the standing committee on labour, manpower and overseas Pakistanis that new Federal Minister Khursheed Shah ordered the move.
Chaired by Senator Naeem Hussain Chatha, the body decided to summon Shah for next meeting to explain why he allowed a company with sketchy record to import manpower from Pakistan. The panel last year contested and subsequently forced the cancellation of the same facility to the said company. International Shipping Lines Employment Company is owned by an individual of Pakistani origin who long lived in the United Kingdom.
Senator Enver Baig, who initially raised the issue, told journalists after the meeting that the application for manpower import by company's owner Riaz Ahmed Khokhar did not carry proper supporting evidences.
Riaz's request neither suggested where his company was based in Netherlands nor did it contain record of his bank statements and board of directors, he added. All these, the senator explained, were the pre-requisites for applying for such purpose.
Baig alleged Riaz once offered him bribe through a Lahore-based local overseas employment company he was in collaboration with for not pressing the matter in the committee. The intention behind seeking the permission could have been minting money by offering people employment visas of Holland, Enver suspected.
But he added individuals travelling to a particular country on such visas could never be able to work on ships which had to sail one country after another. Earlier, the panel asked the ministry to review its manpower export agreements with South Korea and Malaysia to address the problems of job seekers. The committee also called for seeking firm guarantees from Qatar government on the number of workers it intended to import from Pakistan under an accord signed recently.