OTTAWA: Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Canada Tariq Azim Khan hosted a dinner in honour of Canadian Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Ahmed Hussen at the Pakistan House, Ottawa. The High Commissioner briefed the minister about visa difficulties being faced by Pakistani students and businessmen. He said that stringent and lengthy visa processing delays for bona fide students from Pakistan was discouraging. He also informed the minister that the existing trade relations between the two countries needed to be given a boost and discussed the prospect of enabling Pakistani traders to visit Canada to meet with their counterparts which can provide required impetus to trade volume between the two countries.
He urged the minister that bottleneck in processing of visas to students and traders should be removed. The immigration minister said that as a matter of policy, the government had been working to reduce backlogs and speed up the processing of visa applications in order to allow students and traders to visit Canada. He assured the high commissioner to personally look into the complaints of bona fide applicants from Pakistan during his upcoming visit to the processing centres in the region. He informed the high commissioner that progress had been made to speed up family reunion cases. He assured to support Pakistani international students on university campuses in Canada.
Published in Daily Times, November 12th 2017.
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