A representational image showing people walking at a subway in UK. PHOTO: REUTERS
ISLAMABAD: A country with population of over 200 million comprising 60-70% youth has tremendous potential of an easy take-off, leading to prosperity in all areas of the national economy.
Currently, Pakistan is producing plenty of professionals ranging from certificate and diploma holders to graduate and post-graduates, but they mostly encounter much difficulty in finding suitable jobs.
Apparently, Pakistan is missing a focused political commitment, direction and professional approach as human capital development has never been given priority. The problem is compounded at the implementation level by weak professional capacity and inconsistency of human resources development policies as well as by complete disconnect among major stakeholders at planning and implementation levels. The business-as-usual approach without any innovation and lack of synergies among the academia, researchers and private sector for the formulation and implementation of human resources development policies has resulted in complete failure of these efforts.
At the political level, except for sweeping statements that jobs will be provided, no serious homework is reflected in manifestos of political parties as to how they will mobilise resources to put in place policies linking the academia and researchers, aligning the private sector with and synergising national/regional policies aimed at job creation.
Political parties promise to provide jobs but when they come to power they struggle to adjust a few die-hard party workers in different departments and companies, leaving the majority of qualified and eligible youth to find jobs on their own. This mostly causes frustration among voters and leads to failure of the political parties in next general elections.
Gone are the days when parties were elected repeatedly just on the basis of ideology, sacrifices and other such slogans as now people want jobs besides other tangible socio-economic progress. Parties have failed to realise this very important fact and they do not have any realistic programmes to address these issues on a sustainable basis.
Challenges
Pakistan faces a number of challenges including but not limited to a lack of clear and achievable policies, strategies and programmes, weak capacity and inconsistency in their implementation at all levels. Policy formulation and implementation is not inclusive and core stakeholders are neither taken on board nor consulted altogether.
Another problem is that there is no connection between the education got by professionals and the task assigned to them during their process of education and afterwards. Even professional engineers rarely get a chance to practice whatever they have learnt as the overall work environment and culture in the public sector does not mostly promote professionalism in Pakistan.
There is a complete disconnect among the academia, research, private and public sector policy and programmes. Research and policy linkages coupled with resource mobilisation by the private sector are the key to successful interventions in any sector of the economy. The academia and researchers work in isolation and rarely involve the private sector nor is their research driven by market demand.
Thus, Pakistan is losing a huge potential by neglecting young scientists and PhD scholars. In developed countries, professors and senior researchers are always busy tailouring their research in line with market dynamics and therefore attract a huge investment in innovative research from the private sector.
Researchers in Pakistan primarily rely on grants from the public sector and most of the research institutes face hardships in sustaining their programmes and projects as they lack the capacity of fund-raising from the open market. The private sector is only interested in the products based on innovation in order to be more compatible while the academia and researchers are neither aware nor geared towards such products.
There is no linkage between research and policy formation as research is never considered important for developing informed policies. Policymakers are not aware what research is under way in areas requiring research-based policies.
This disconnect has deprived the nation of market-based resource mobilisation and job creation opportunities in these areas.
Education is meant only for producing graduates and professionals and there is no counselling of prospective students and graduating professionals. Consequently, we produce highly qualified graduates at the cost of hard-earned money of their parents who wait for suitable jobs in the areas of their interest. A few lucky ones having access to power corridors can get jobs just for their social status and mostly such jobs have nothing to do with their level of specialisation.
Addressing challenges
Solutions to these challenges are not that tough and could easily be achieved through commitments at all levels of political, professional and administrative hierarchy. However, it is rare and very hard to get such commitments.
The first and foremost thing is to set a clear direction for developing a realistic home-grown policy involving all stakeholders. Objectives and output of the policy should not only be achievable but also quantifiable.
Human capital development such as counselling at educational institutions by providing a variety of choices for engagements during and after post-graduation, capacity building, networking, effective business plans, market-based job search, grooming for self-employment, enterprise and marketing development, registration of business entities and market-based resource mobilisation are essentially required.
Pakistan is blessed with a huge market that can absorb the available human capital in various sectors of the economy. Take for example agriculture, which provides jobs to a third of the population and can be made more effective if capacity building and market-based enterprise development and resource mobilisation are ensured.
Most of the agricultural employment and marketing is run by the informal sector. At farm level, even the employment is neither recognised nor rewarded as it involves the family members mostly women. At the secondary level of value addition and trade in the vegetable market, middlemen take away the lion’s share through the informal market mechanism.
Post-harvest value addition not only leads to job creation but also fetches better prices for different products. Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited (ZTBL) mostly advances loans not to business enterprises but to individuals. Its mandate is to improve the capacity of farmers by helping them connect to the market, provide technology and stay connected to them in order to shield their common interests for the success of investment. However, so far the whole loaning mechanism has promoted the informal sector, depriving the farming community of its due and just share in the credit facility.
Technology
Information technology, a very strong job-creating sector, is also struggling under the informal sector just because of a lack of capacity and training for enterprise development. A few of them having some support from the family in terms of improved capacity and enterprise are better off but mostly IT professionals fail to access the resources through formal tools and techniques.
Similarly, a huge market is available for auto repair and services but this too is mostly in the informal sector without any guided mechanism. Hundreds of such vibrant job opportunities in various sectors are facing the same problem, though most of these skills are imparted through training at skill development institutions operating in public and private sectors.
Gaps need to be identified and synergies developed among various arms of the economy aimed at a guided programme of actions that helps not only in developing but also guiding and grooming the human capital for placement at appropriate and deserving positions under the market mechanism.
Public sector has to take the lead in developing realistic and achievable human resources development policies and strategies and ensuring their implementation using a right platform and proactive professionals besides ensuring linkages and synergies among stakeholders and institutions.
The writer is a Phd in Natural Resource Management and is a civil servant
Published in The Express Tribune, December 17th, 2018.
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