Pulling off a hiring coup

Qatari foreign minister’s offered to employ 100,0 00 Pakistani workers

The Qatari foreign minister’s offer to employ 100,0 00 skilled and semi-skilled workers is bound to send the whole of Pakistan into overdrive. The offer — made to our foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly — is both generous and attractive enough to be counted as an early dividend of the PTI government’s fresh foreign policy overtures towards the Gulf states. Past governments had boasted long and hard about their success in wangling lucrative jobs abroad for Pakistani nationals either in the Gulf or across the wider Middle East region but despite the tall claims little or no employment chances materialised. So any hint of public skepticism or distrust is justified.

Working overseas has several advantages of course. One can gain practical skills in a different setting, be exposed to diverse cultures, and make useful international contacts. Pakistan and its pool of workers profit directly as a consequence. Worker remittances, a leading source of foreign currency inflows, also swell. Overall, the impact of improved employment among citizens is impossible to ignore, introducing as it does the rich element of vigour into the country’s economy.

Before the government rushes to accept Qatar’s employment offer, some judicious measures need to be taken. The agency handling manpower recruitment abroad must ensure a proper scrutiny of job seekers, verifying their credentials, skills and aptitude. Such a rigorous process of scrutiny will spare our blushes in future and earn Pakistani labour a better reputation abroad. On the strength of our latest manpower export, we could perhaps have a stronger case for deploying more Pakistani workers in Qatar and elsewhere in the Gulf as well. Proper certification in the vocation that workers pursue as well as language training can help close the gap between Pakistani workers and their regional counterparts in the Gulf labour market.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2018.

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