In latest dent to Pakistan’s image and possibly to remittance inflows, Saudi Arabia has asked Pakistani doctors and other health professionals to leave the country following the rejection of Pakistan’s postgraduate degree programmes by Saudi authorities according to whom these degrees do not meet their domestic medical staff hiring regulations.
Media reports allege that the sacking of professionals who hold these degrees is at least in part because the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (CPSP) has been reportedly lobbying for their own certifications with the Saudis and other regional countries - making a case against those who hold postgraduate degrees under university programmes (Master of Surgery and Doctor of Medicine).
While the story of this academic infighting demands a separate fact-finding inquiry, some quarters worry that Saudi’s move, which is expected to be followed by other countries in the region, will make a huge dent on remittance inflows to Pakistan.
It is difficult to make a quantitative assessment of whether or not the sacking of these or any other category of workers in Saudi or any country will hit hard on remittance inflows to Pakistan. That’s mainly because remittance inflow data classified by category of labour, or even survey-based estimates thereof, are not available in Pakistan.
For instance, average annual remittance by doctors as against labourers or nurses or accountants across key remittance corridors – reliable estimates for this kind of questions are not publicly available, and to the best of BR Research’s understanding based on networks within academia and policy circles, such studies have not even been conducted. This only reiterates the view that labours exports – despite being the biggest export of the country - is a largely ignored subject. (For more on this read BR Research’s Pakistan’s economic stepchild, published July 22, 2019)
Anyway, according to the last updated data by Pakistan’s Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment (BEOE) a total of about 10.7 million Pakistani workers were working abroad as of June 2019. Of this only 25,146 Pakistani were doctors.
Sources in Pakistan Medical & Dental Council (PMDC) say that BEOE’s numbers for doctors working abroad may be hugely understated. Yet on the other hand, it must be noted that BEOE’s datasets are not adjusted for those workers who have returned back to the homeland. In other words, migration dataset won’t be able to provide a clue as to the extent of the damage by Saudi’s rejection of these degrees.
Neither are there reliable estimates as to what percentage of medical professionals working in Saudi Arabia hold those degrees that now stands rejected by Saudi authorities, as against those who hold the still eligible FCPS certification from the CPSP.
However, considering that there are more doctors who hold FCPS rather than MS and MD in Pakistan, it would stand to reason that the impact on remittances would be fairly limited. Sources in PMDC say that there are about 21600 FCPS holders in Pakistan, as against about 400 MD degrees and about 1250 MS holders.
The bottom-line being, the sacked Pakistani doctors and health professionals in Saudi will surely dent remittance flows, but its impact will likely be very small. More than remittances, however, this episode raises questions over the governance of medical profession in Pakistan. If CPSP is indeed lobbying against postgraduate degrees, then this matter ought to be resolved. Regardless, foreign countries ought to have a single government level contact to sort out the issue of eligibility of Pakistani degrees, failing which the country risks hurting its own image and that of its professionals.
Comments
Comments are closed.