Additional Interior Secretary Salman Chaudhry said on Thursday that the United Arab Emirates had not been issuing visas to Pakistanis.
Pakistan and the UAE share close diplomatic, economic, and cultural ties. The UAE is one of Pakistan’s largest trading partners in the Middle East and a major source of remittances, with a large Pakistani expatriate population living and working there.
The secretary made this revelation during a meeting of the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights, further stating that Saudi Arabia and the UAE had “stopped short of imposing a ban on the Pakistani passport”.In April, UAE Ambassador to Pakistan Hamad Obaid Ibrahim Salem Al-Zaabi announced that visa issues had been resolved and Pakistanis could now avail a five-year visa.Separately, Senator Samina Mumtaz Zehri, who heads the Senate committee on human rights, also confirmed that the interior ministry official’s remarks to Dawn. She said the bar was attributed to concerns about people travelling to the UAE and “getting involved in criminal activities”.
The committee was told that the UAE was not issuing visas to Pakistanis and that very few had been issued in the recent past “after much difficulty”, she said.
Visa rejections were also faced by Pakistani citizens in early July, which prompted Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi to raise the issue with his UAE counterpart.
