The Chairman of National Vocational and Technical Education Commission, Adnan A. Khawaja has said that skilled workforce would be sent to the Middle East to increase the flow of home remittances. Remittances are, in fact, already playing a vital role in Pakistan's balance of payments support and economic growth.
Khawaja has rightly said that export of a good number of skilled workers would greatly help reduce Pakistan's dependence on foreign assistance. Secondly, sending workers abroad can also offer a partial solution to the country's acute unemployment problem, which has become one of the most pressing challenges, demanding the government's immediate attention.
Thirdly, viewed purely in economic perspective, imparting technical training to high school graduates or even to school dropouts can prove highly cost-effective in terms of the investment the government needs to make in producing skilled workers and the amount of remittances they would send back home while working abroad.
There has been a steady decline in Pakistan's manpower export largely because of availability of comparatively cheaper, and perhaps better-trained labour from Bangladesh, Philippines, Thailand and India. A comparative study conducted in 2006 had put the decline in Pakistan's manpower export in 2004-05 at 18 percent - a decrease that should be made up through initiating training programmes for youths.
There is clearly a need to establish a vocational authority empowered to award skill certification to diploma holders of technical training institutes affiliated to it, which will help our workers to get better-paid jobs in foreign countries. At present only certified electricians are being produced in the country and sent abroad.
The facility should be extended to all categories of technicians such as masons, plumbers, carpenters etc-etc so that they are able to get employment commensurate with their professional training and expertise. According to the study conducted in 2006, as many as 173,824 workers were sent abroad in 2004, compared to 142,135 who left the country in 2005.
Further, Pakistan received an amount of $2055.20 million as workers' remittances in the first half of FY 2005 as against $1,946.14 million it had received in the corresponding period of the preceding year, representing an increase of $109.06 million. The role of remittances as a short-term stabiliser of the economy, as well as a vehicle for economic betterment at the grassroots level, cannot be denied. However, this is only one aspect of the issue.
It should be mentioned here that single-minded export of trained workforce in the long-term perspective could prove extremely harmful to our industrial sector. Exodus of trained manpower cannot only stunt our industrial growth but can also frustrate the government's plan to effect a policy shift of focus from the services to the manufacturing sector.
How can the government achieve the policy sift if trained workers in large numbers are sent abroad to earn petrodollars? There is, therefore, a need to effect a pragmatic balance between the requirements of the country's industrial sector and its needs of foreign remittances. Tilting the balance either way can jeopardise our national interest.
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