The government informed the Senate on Wednesday that a total of 266,412 Pakistanis were deported from different countries, majority of whom had to face expulsion by Saudi authorities during the last three years. During the question-hour, Federal Minister for Interior Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan in a written reply to a question by Senator Chaudhry Tanvir Khan said that 78,409 people were deported in 2014, 116,185 in 2015, and 71,818 people were deported in 2016.
During this period, 175 Pakistanis were deported from Iran, 30 from Afghanistan and 27 from India. According to the minister, the primary reasons for their deportation was overstay, loss of passports retained by kafeel or sponsor, illegal immigrant, entry refused and fake documents. From UAE, 8,434 Pakistanis were deported in 2014, 8,690 in 2015 and 1,352 Pakistanis were deported in 2016.
Replying to queries, State Minister for Interior Muhammad Balighur Rehman said that majority of these 'returned' via air travel, whereas 4,956 were deported from Iran in 2014, 26,978 in 2015 and 16,159 Pakistanis were deported in 2016 via land, whereas 1920 'returned' via sea from Oman in 2014 and none in next two years. He said that on the directions of the Prime Minister, a number of measures had been taken to arrest this trend and the results so far had been promising. To another question from PPPP's Ahmad Hassan, Baleegh pointed out that for the first time, mapping and survey of the land of the Capital Development Authority had been launched along with satellite imaging to find out how much of it was under illegal occupation and adverse occupation. In the light of that, full action would be taken against the occupiers with zero tolerance to this menace.
He explained that the Prime Minister had taken notice of occupation of CDA land and the CDA chairman was also focusing on this issue. He added a CDA team went on Wednesday for demarcation of the land, belonging to the Quaid-e-Azam University. Senators Dr Jehanzeb Jamaldeni of BNP-Mengal, Ahmad Hassan of PPPP and Chaudhry Tanvir Khan of PML-N came down hard on CDA for closing its eyes to land grabbers, whereas MQM's Tahir Hussain Mashhadi went ahead to allege that this illegal occupation of precious CDA land was impossible without the involvement of CDA officials and wanted action against them.
Senator Chaudhry Tanvir agitated on provision of incomplete information to his questions regarding the military hospitals and combined military hospitals working under the administrative control of the armed forces. He said his question was previously not replied and now the information provided was incomplete.
On his request, Deputy Chairman Senate Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, who conducted the question hour, deferred the question. The information shared in writing with the House, included there were as many as 45 hospitals under the army, which included three 1000-bed, one 700-bed, four 600-bed, two 500-bed and seven 400-bed hospitals. The hospitals under the control of the Pakistan Air Force stood at 08 and four are Pakistan Navy's hospitals. Hence, number of beds at the army hospitals is 13,500, 1,057 beds are at the naval hospitals and 1,405 beds are at Pakistan Air Force hospitals.
The total budget for these hospitals in the year 2015-2016 was Rs 8.27 billion. The remaining information is being collected and would be shared with the House. Minister for Railways Khawaja Saad Rafique told the House that from May 2013 to December 31, 2016, a total of 25 fatal/serious accidents occurred in which loss of life or injury was mainly due to railway employees' fault: out of these, 17 accidents happened due to human error of railway employees; seven accidents were related to sabotage activities while one occurred due to natural calamity.
The number of persons, who lost lives due to accidents, stemming from human error, was 94 while another 413 were injured. He said the SOPs, the department followed, were good but dated back to 125 years and the ministry is presently working on a number of key measures to massively cut down number of accidents.