Most of the youth unemployed in AJK

Chamber chief says strict control of AJK council restricts development.

MIRPUR:

Jammu and Kashmir Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s outgoing president Zulfiqar Abbasi has asked the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) government to address the growing sense of alienation and deprivation among different segments of the society, particularly the youth and women, due to prevailing high unemployment.

Talking to the media here on Thursday, Abbasi cited statistics which showed that youth formed 65 per cent of the region’s population, but were mostly unemployed. “Even qualified women are jobless due to the limited scope for employment in the public sector while the shrinking private sector has been unable to cope with emerging needs and challenges of employment,” he said.

Abbasi, who represented the joint forum of the business community of AJK and occupied Jammu and Kashmir, alleged that the AJK Council never tried to attract private investment for industrial development, nor did it seek support from Kashmiri expatriates.

Nearly a million Kashmiris are settled in the UK who have assets worth billions of dollars and have deposits of around Rs2,000 billion in Pakistani banks. “These commercial banks have never advanced even one per cent of these deposits to support economic activity in the region,” Abbasi said.

Quoting current estimates, he said around 300,000 jobs were required to cater to the needs of promising youth in the next five to seven years. However, in the present scenario the state did not have the capacity to create even 3,000 jobs as the private sector had not been allowed to develop.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 24^th, 2012.