Pakistanis mourn hundreds feared dead in Greece boat tragedy

Islamabad_Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah Tuesday said that an investigation report on the Greece boat disaster would be submitted within one week by duly fixing responsibility on those involved in negligence.

Authorities in Europe still have no clear idea how many people were aboard the boat when it sank — estimates range from 400 to over 700 — but likely hundreds came from Pakistan, and many from Azad Jammu Kashmir. As per the foreign media reports, 80 people have died and hundreds are still missing.

The United Nations Human Rights office said in a statement on Sunday that at least 500 people were still missing and that dozens of people were known to have perished. A good number of women and children were among the missing persons in the “horrific trage­dy”. The ferry boat was carrying up to 750 people that went down 50 nautical miles off Pylos in southern Greece, it further said.

Earlier,

DG FIA Mohsin Hassan Butt chaired the seventh session of the inter-agency task force at the FIA Headquarters. The participants of the session expressed sorrow over the loss of precious lives in the Greece boat disaster.

Director Immigration Abdul Qadir Qamar briefed the participants about the steps for curbing human trafficking.

The DG FIA urged to compile data on human traffickers and suspected travel agents to eliminate the heinous crime. He also stressed coordination between all institutions to eliminate human trafficking across the country.The inter-agency task force also expressed the aim to work for curbing human smuggling with the assistance of global institutions.

The task force decided to introduce a modern system for monitoring the movement of citizens on borders. It has been decided to take legal action against the unregistered employment promotors.

The Bureau of Immigration and Overseas Employment will provide the record of unregistered agents to the task force.

While,

Local media say more than 200 Pakistani nationals were among an estimated 750 people on board the fishing trawler heading for Europe when the vessel sank on Wednesday, June 14, off the Peloponnese peninsula.

At least 20 of those missing were from the city of Gujranwala, in Punjab province. Among them was Amir Malik’s cousin Mohsin, who left a voice note as he boarded the boat in Libya’s Tobruk on June 9.

“Once he arrived in Libya, the smugglers took his phone. We had no choice but to go through the smuggler to be in contact with him,” Malik said. “That’s how we learned that he was not going to go to Europe by plane but illegally, by boat. Mohsin told us: ‘I am trapped, I have no choice but to follow them.’”

With Pakistan’s economy in freefall, the desperate situation is creating an incentive for Pakistanis to take perilous, illegal routes to Europe in the hope of a better future. Since the deadly shipwreck, local officials say they have arrested 10 people on suspicion of involvement in human trafficking.

A few steps away from Malik’s home, Moniza Baig said she has no news of her son Ajmeer, the father of a one-year-old girl.
“My son asked me this question before leaving: ‘Tell me mom, how can I survive here? Baby diapers are very expensive, milk is expensive, I have no money to feed my children,’” she said. “In each family, the young men are hopeless; they beg their parents to sell their homes and pay for them to go work abroad.”