Muscat: Oman's coast guards say they have foiled two recent attempts by infiltrators to sneak into the country across the northern side of its 1600km coastline.
"The patrol boat chased down a boat six nautical miles off the Seeb beach and arrested 29 people trying to get entry into the country without valid papers," a spokesperson for the Royal Oman Police (ROP), told Gulf News on Saturday.
Reliable sources said all 29 were Pakistani nationals. The authorities said they would get in touch with their mission and make arrangements to send them back to their country.
The second boat with 21 people was caught by the coast guard close to the shore in Saham in the country's north after a chase as they boat did not heed the coast guard's warnings to stop.
Nineteen out of the 21 caught were Pakistani nationals. Another was Iranian and another was an Afghan national, the sources said.
The two recent boatloads follow a total of 1622 people Oman authorities said they had caught trying to enter the country illegally in the first 10 months of this year.
The long coast of Oman is mainly the target of people trying to smuggle in impoverished jobseekers, particularly from Pakistan. They cross into Iran by foot and take boats which drop them along the long Omani coast in the darkness of night.
The problem of poor job seekers falling prey to unscrupulous elements in their home country has continued as people have been willing to pay to sail to Oman in desperate search of employment.
Some five years ago the problem was so acute that nearly every week Oman had to repatriate between 700 and 800 infiltrators to Pakistan and more than 10,000 were sent back to Pakistan.
Then a Pakistani diplomat told Gulf News that the 900km border it shared with Iran was making it difficult for Pakistan to eradicate the jobseekers' attempts to cross illegally into Iran, to sail to Oman.
The problem in recent years has become less significant, with Iran's co-operation with Pakistan and Oman in a bid to counter the wave of human trafficking crime.
