Syed Mussarat Khalil

Saudi Gazette

JEDDAH — The Pakistan Repatriation Council (PRC) held a function to stand in solidarity with Pakistan's Supreme Court's decision on accepting the petition of stranded Pakistanis at a local restaurant here.



Scholar and ex-diplomat Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi said: "I am extremely happy that supreme court of Pakistan accepted the SPGRC (Stranded Pakistanis General Repatriation Committee) petition which remained pending since 2009.



Now we hope that stranded Pakistanis will earn their long awaited justice and will be finally settled in Pakistan."



Al-Ghamdi, who was also the chief guest at the function, praised the role of PRC in highlighting the plight of a quarter million Pakistanis in Bangladesh.



He added: "Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif repatriated Pakistanis in his past tenure by taking a positive action; and now when Allah has blessed him to become the prime minister again, he should be kind to those people and take urgent measures to settle them in allocated land in Punjab."



He quoted a saying of the Prophet (peace be upon him) which states that Allah blesses those rulers who take care of oppressed people in the society.



In his presidential address the noted Pakistani poet and vice president PRC in Pakistan Naseem-e-Sehar praised the supreme court for boldly accepting the petition of SPGRC, which was submitted in 2009 in which the federal government was asked to formally advise action taken for the repatriation of stranded Pakistanis from Bangladesh.



Leader of Pakistan People Community Shamsuddin Altaf and Secretary general of  Pakistan Engineers Society (PES) Engineer Aziz Ahmed praised PRC  for organizing the function.



Famous poets Shaukat Jamal, Abdul Qayyum Wasiq and Zamurrad Saifi presented patriotic poems.



Convener Ehsan ul Haque thanked the speakers, poets and journalists for participating in the event.



Earlier, the function began with the recitation of a few verses from the Qur'an by Abdul Majeed followed by a Naat by Sher Afzal.