Pakistan has addressed the issue of the high number of its citizens that are on transit to Saudi Arabia through Kenya for the first time.
This comes after the government of Kenya launched a crackdown against Pakistan immigrants who are in the country illegally.
Pakistan High Commissioner to Kenya Saqlain Syedah blamed travel agents for organizing trips for more than 20, 000 Pakistanis to travel through Kenya for their destination jobs in Saudi Arabia.
Speaking to Daily Nation, Syedah said that all the Pakistanis arriving in the country had valid documents that were obtained legally at a fee.
“All Pakistani transit passengers have valid e-visa, travel documents, vaccination certificates and hotel bookings for the period of quarantine,” she said.
Syedah accused the agents of tricking the nationals to travel longer distances just to dodge covid regulations that have been put in place in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia restricted flights from Pakistan, India, Brazil, South Africa and several other countries with either new variants or higher Covid-19 infection rates. The options for travelers is to either fly to Dubai, UAE and quarantine, or fly to a cheaper place such as Nairobi.
“The travel agents are to be blamed because they are overcharging travelers, only to bring them to conditions that are not worth of the amount of money they are paying. We will hold discussions between our two governments to ensure that proper information is available to travelers,” Syedah said.
The government announced the crackdown on Wednesday and by Saturday about 200 Pakistanis had been deported for having invalid documents.
Syedah said that most of the most of the nationals had been arrested before being released on Friday. She added they had to pay up to $4000 each for the Saudi Arabia trips.
“The government of Pakistan will usually not be involved in the issuance of visas by Kenya and we believe that once those visas are issued on valid documents, there should be no reason to doubt they are genuine documents,” the commissioner said.
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