Asian – Dispatch

Pakistan plans to overhaul its pilgrimage travel policy to Iraq, Iran and Syria after authorities confirmed that around 40,000 Pakistani pilgrims went missing or overstayed in the three countries over the past decade, raising serious diplomatic and security concerns, a senior immigration official said.

Each year, thousands of Pakistani Shia pilgrims travel to regional religious shrines, but host governments have repeatedly flagged the issue of undocumented or unreturned visitors. The problem resurfaced this week after Religious Affairs Minister Sardar Muhammad Yousaf revealed that 40,000 Pakistani pilgrims had either overstayed or gone missing in these countries without any official record of their whereabouts.

In response, authorities have scrapped the long-standing “Salar system,” in which private group leaders managed travel logistics, and are introducing a new centralized, computerized structure to track and regulate pilgrim movement more effectively.

Source: Daily Times