HYDERABAD: Almost always it is the poor — be it the migrants who go abroad in search of a livelihood, or pilgrims — who find themselves at the wrong end of the stick. It is mostly because of the lack of awareness about the norms that are needed to be followed while going abroad, or the cunning travel agents looking for ways to cheat people for their personal gain.
Until recently, fake travel agents were mostly responsible for migrants from the city getting trapped and tortured in the Middle Eastern countries. However, now they are also taking advantage of those going for pilgrimages. The arrest of 14 Umrah pilgrims on Wednesday, after they were found smuggling gold, is yet another proof.
As in the case of migrants, travel agents arrange visit visas for their customers who are actually travelling to other countries for work. Often, these migrants get into a disagreement with their kafeels over the nature of work and they end up being tortured. It is only when they decide to leave the country, that their visit visas are discovered, consequently landing them in jail. In numerous cases, migrants from the city have been asked to pay money to their kafeels for returning home. Kafeels often ask for the amount saying that they had paid the travel agents ‘to buy’ the migrant worker.
The Telangana Overseas Manpower Company (TOMCOM) has always maintained that migrants should opt for legal channels to go to other countries. Similarly, Haj and Umrah pilgrimage is also a hot playground for these travel agents to fleece people, or as in this case, take undue advantage of their under-privileged customers.
Last year, Karwan’s Syed-us-Sajidin Tours and Travels was found involved in a multi-crore scam which left 40 pilgrims stuck in Iraq’s Najaf city for a week. It was only after the Ministry of External Affairs intervened that the pilgrims were rescued.
Umrah agents held for similar offence in 2014
In 2014, two Umrah travel agents were arrested in Hyderabad for smuggling in gold through elderly female Umrah pilgrims. Reports say that women passengers, mostly aged between 60 and 80 years, were unaware of the plot and were asked to wear gold bangles after being assured by the travel agents that it was alright to do so