Purchase of property by overseas Pakistanis– A basic brief

By Muhammad Javed

It is by nature that the history is read but nothing is learnt from it. We all take it as guaranteed that what we read today in the newspaper is a “news” but never think we ourselves sometime can become a news. We read sufferings of others, meet the victims but even then do not learn lesson. For example since more than two decades on international airports announcements are made, on press TV we hear stories of victims, the governments issues precautionary notices to the public, almost every one of us know those found with drugs in Saudi Arabia are beheaded, even then last month families were caught in Jeddah on drug charges. These families took as gift the drugs hidden shoes allegedly from the travel agents. This incident has widely been published in press and on TV but take it lesson from it will not be taken and someone some where sometime again would be kind in taking a gift pack from a friend for delivery to someone in Saudi Arabia.
Same is the case of different scams, financial scams, free allotment of plots on lottery, billions worth inheritance money offers in email, mobile phone congratulations on Awards. We know people lost in the past but in the hope in our case the email bestowing world’s best looking personality in our case might be correct we accept it.
The Overseas Pakistanis (OPs) major problem is cheating them on property issues. This piece is being written on that prospect. First of all it may be remembered it is just a basic pre-cautionary guideline and not any authenticated research work or any sort of advisory high caliber note. The second most important thing not to be forgotten is that the writer of this script is just an ordinary man and not any professional writer. He had been an OP himself for long.
About 10 years back I wrote a piece on this subject in Urdu which in 5-6 weekly installments was published by the Daily Urdu News Jeddah. Unfortunately I do not have a copy of that hence this re-writing is fully based on memories. The most important to be remembered is that writer of this piece has lost his one eye in an operation and in other has hardly 25% reading only visibility. This piece is being scribbled just playing with the key board without any pre-drafting or checking of the scribbled writing. Hence errors and inconsistency in it is expected. Due to above factors there may be many things skipped form the mind hence it is not a complete or exhaustive Paper on the subject.