ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has blocked “several thousand passports” and imposed long-term travel restrictions on citizens involved in begging abroad, the country’s overseas minister said on Wednesday, reporting a sharp decline in such cases following enforcement reforms.

Last August, the government announced a sweeping crackdown on what it described as a “beggar mafia” accused of exploiting visas to solicit money in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern states. The practice had drawn complaints from Riyadh, prompting Islamabad to direct the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to curb the trend.

Federal Minister for Overseas Pakistanis Chaudhry Salik Hussain said authorities were targeting individuals who misuse Umrah and other visit visas to beg overseas, particularly in Gulf countries.

“We are not sending the beggars abroad,” he said at the Pakistan Governance Forum 2026 in the federal capital. “It is not written on the face of the beggar that he is a beggar. They go through the normal process of getting a visa for Umrah and then start this work on the side.”

Hussain said passports of deported individuals involved in begging or criminal activity were being blocked to prevent repeat travel.

“For that we can only do that if someone is involved in this work and he is caught and when he is deported, then at least we block his passport, which is happening,” he said. “Believe me, there has been a drastic drop in this.”

“There is no visa for begging. They go on a normal visa. Every document is 100 percent correct,” he added.

According to Hussain, the FIA is imposing passport restrictions of five to 10 years on offenders, preventing them from obtaining new travel documents.

He added that “several thousand passports” had so far been blocked.

Pakistan, which relies heavily on remittances from its overseas workforce, is also seeking to improve the quality of labor exports following meetings with labor ministers in Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“We want our workforce to go there. The quantity is increasing but the quality element is very important,” he said, adding that the government plans to make soft skills training compulsory for Pakistanis going abroad “from the labor class to the undergraduates” so they better understand local norms and regulations.

The minister said exporting skilled labor helps ease unemployment pressures driven by Pakistan’s growing youth population while boosting remittances, which recently hit an all-time high.

“I think this is one of the reasons because our youth bulge is very high in Pakistan and local industries are not enough to cater to that. So we should at least find good jobs in foreign countries and send them there,” he said, adding that overseas workers “not only get employed but also send valuable remittances back home.”

Hussain said broader reforms were also under way to digitize overseas employment processes and reduce corruption.

“We are moving toward maximum digitization,” he said. “Problems and issues arise where humans interact with humans. We are moving toward digitization very quickly.”