Speakers at an international seminar said that Pakistan needs to invest on education, health and human resource development heavily in order to improve the pace of rural development by involving 65% population to mitigate the magnitude of internal migration and net the growing problems of rapid urbanisation in the country.
The conference on "Migration and Desertification" was organised by Department of Rural Sociology to commemorate 50 years of excellence and celebrate the year 2011 as Golden Jubilee here at University of Agriculture (UAF).
UAF VC Professor Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan, Director DAAD Islamabad, Ursula Saarabek, Professor Dr Beatrice Knerr Head of Dept. of Migration & Development University of Kassal Germany, Dr Abdillahi Aboud, Professor Dr Saeed Shafqat Director Center for Public Policy and Governance, FC College University Lahore, Zhao Xi, Professor Dr M. Iqbal Zafar Dean Faculty of Agri. Economics & Rural Sociology, Professor Dr Ashfaq Ahmad Maann, Dr Izhar Ahmad Khan, and Ijaz Imran were of the view that government must tap the demographic dividend and involve the ever high volume of youth in entrepreneurial, technical, vocational and self employing activities in rural as well as urban areas.
Professor Dr Saeed Shafqat, Director Center for Public Policy and Governance, FC College University Lahore told that Japan, Germany and other European countries were going through problem as major proportion of their population consists upon aged people and they are in dire need of health care staff and Pakistan can harness the opportunity by equipping a large number of people with requisite nursing skills.
UAF VC Professor Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan underscored the need of phasing out trends of restricting at one place and urged the professionals to migrate from one place to another that would certainly prove fruitful. Dr Ahmad told that they need to make the remittances sent by overseas Pakistanis more productive as he had observation of witnessing the spending of such remittances in making huge houses, which he thought was a proper way of making investment. Dr Khan said that he happened to stay in the Middle East for many years and had a close observation of manhandling of the domestic workers in general and female workers in particular.
Director DAAD Islamabad, Ursula Saarabek said that German Universities were offering 53000 scholarships globally and students of UAF could get the opportunity of studying in German universities by winning the scholarships on competitive basis. She urged UAF students to visit DAAD website www.ic.daad.de/Islamabad so as to get the information about study and research in Germany.
She asked the participants to remain precise on the research topic and its objectives to avoid inconvenience, they did not need to send the same email to more than one German Professor as it would create mistrust and show a non-serious attitude of the students. Saarabek emphasised the students that instead of writing a short letter, they need to write a complete application/proposal as desired by the host institution and professor.