DOHA: Some in the Qatari community have begun feeling the negative impact of the thriving illegal visa trade as groups of young and unemployed expatriate youth are seen idling away in some residential areas.
These youth are suspected to have landed here on visas of companies that do not seem to have work for them, some Qataris told Qatar Radio’s popular call-in programme, Good Morning, My Beloved Qatar! yesterday.
“There is a group of African youth living in our neighbourhood.
“They don’t have jobs. They don’t sleep the whole night and create nuisance,” a caller who said he was from Madinat Khalifa told the programme.
“It seems their sponsors have abandoned them. Why don’t they send them back? I have informed the police,” said the caller.
He said the youth create nuisance and intercept people passing by and ask for jobs. “Some ask for financial help as well.”
“They are a threat to security. They don’t have money. They don’t have jobs.”
Another caller who gave his name as Abu Mohamed suggested that to crack down on the illegal visa trade, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs set up a company in association with the private sector and that company sponsor foreign workers.
That way the visa trade can be brought to an end, the caller added.
The Vice-Chairman of the Central Municipal Council (CMC), meanwhile, told The Peninsula that in his view the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs should join hands with the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Interior and set up a committee that should issue visas after careful scrutiny of applicants.
“I think that can help effectively fight the free visa menace,” said Jassem Abdullah Al Malki.
Al Malki said the problem was that many workers who arrived here on free visas had bought those visas in their home countries by spending a lot of money which they had raised through loans. “So, many of these workers are in debt.”
According to him, the CMC has not taken up the issue of free visas for debate because in its view the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs are doing enough to tackle the problem.
CMC member, Ibrahim Al Ibrahim, said the illegal visa trade was lucrative for its perpetrators since for some nationalities the “price” per visa had gone up to as high as QR40,000.
A businessman, Saleh Rashid Al Athba, meanwhile, told Al Sharq in remarks published on Sunday that for some African countries the visa “rates” were about $10,000. Companies that “sell” these visas have agents through whom they promote their “business”.
The Peninsula
