| March 6, 2003 | Thursday | Muharram 2, 1424 |
The search for jobs
The canal controversy
AN in-session parliament costs the exchequer approximately about Rs8,000 a minute, according to a rough estimate produced over a cup of tea in parliament’s cafeteria by PML-Q’s minority MNA from Rawalpindi, M.P. Bhandara, known as Mino Bhandara. He seems to have included in the estimate even the notional rent for the space as well as utility charges and salaries of the secretariat staff besides the allowances and perks of members. He is, therefore, very sad at the way the time of the house is being ‘wasted’ on ‘irrelevancies’. He says he has written a detailed letter to the relevant persons inviting their attention to this ‘waste’ and telling them that it was precisely for this reason that previous parliaments could not complete their tenures.
If one went by Mr Bhandara’s estimate, the loss to the exchequer on Wednesday would be a colossal Rs2.5 million because from the very word go the opposition made it impossible for the house to take up any of the subjects on the list in the Order of the Day. Even the question hour was set aside. And finally the speaker had to call it a day around 8:30pm without disposing of any business, to meet again on Friday at 10am.
Within minutes of the commencement of the sitting the hall started echoing with cries of ‘No-LFO-No’, ‘Go-speaker-Go’ and ‘Go-Musharraf-Go’. And all through the sitting, which was adjourned twice, once for Maghrib prayers and again for the opposition and the ruling alliance to meet and come to some kind of settlement on the contentious issue of the LFO, the opposition kept chanting these slogans. At times they were even heard calling out ‘Allah-o-Akber’
One could clearly see that the house was seemingly being given a taste of what is to be expected on the day the president would come to parliament to address the joint sitting. But then such a session is hardly likely to take place in a hurry because the opposition has already warned that it will not allow parliament to function unless the speaker announced his ruling on the LFO which he has kept reserved for almost three months now.
Mr Bhandara’s concerns about financial losses appear legitimate. And one would like to agree with him that it was because of the failure of previous parliaments to accomplish serious legislative work that they did not last long. But then what does a parliament do when it has no legislative work to do? That is exactly the dilemma the present parliament is facing. All the legislative work which it was supposed to be handling has already been done by Pakistan’s army chief who was elected to the office of the president through a questionable referendum last year.
In such a situation what would members do with their time in the NA if they are stopped even from misusing their right to discuss ‘irrelevancies’ on points of order? Members are not even allowed to discuss the LFO in the house. They have been asked to muster two-thirds majority to throw it out. And by ruling that the Provisional Constitutional Order (which does not exist any more) empowered the COAS to amend the constitution the Supreme Court which itself does not have the right to make laws or amend the constitution has rendered the elected house redundant and by implication told the members that they are there only to provide the label of democracy to the military ruler.
The members who were agitating on Wednesday in the NA perhaps do not like to be the willing collaborators in such a cover up. Interestingly, even the members of the ruling alliance appeared totally indifferent to the plight of the speaker on Wednesday. He was provided no help from the treasury benches. One could see Water and Power Minister Aftab Sherpao of PPP-S, who has a huge stake in the new set-up, trying to get things sorted out. But no other minister appeared to be listening to him. In fact, at one stage, Mr Sherpao was seen giving up the effort in a huff. Some of the ruling alliance partners like Nasir Chattha, Tahirul Qadri and even Sher Afgan Khan Niazi of PPPP-Patriots were seen siding with the opposition. The chief whip of the ruling alliance, Abdul Sattar Laleka, appeared too busy without doing anything. Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed went out of the hall and was seen spewing venom against the opposition in the corridors while talking to journalists.
A visitor who had seen it all since 1985 said he had not witnessed such a scene in the National Assembly ever before. One tends to agree with him because what had happened during the joint sitting addresses of Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Farooq Leghari, in retrospect look like child’s play compared to what happened on Wednesday.
The way the opposition behaved on Wednesday it appeared as if it was not only the LFO which had provoked them. The MMA, at least, was furious because on Tuesday the prime minister had implied publicly that there was a link between Al Qaeda and Jamaat-i-Islami by recalling that all the three big fish of the Al Qaeda were arrested at the houses of JI workers. The PPP was also enraged because of the prime minister’s relentless attacks on Benazir Bhutto. The prime minister keeps on expressing his earnest desire to take every one along, including the opposition, but never misses an opportunity to throw a left hook at them in public. But then perhaps, he too does not have much to say in public other than hit out at the opposition.
Tailpiece: Wonder of wonders, one saw both on Tuesday as well as on Wednesday a flag car stopped at the outer gates of parliament and given a thorough once-over. And out came minister of industries Liaquat Jatoi when the car stopped in the parliament portico. The parliament grapevine says that he has lodged a serious complaint with the PM’s office in this regard.
A high-level government official admitted last week that not enough job opportunities were being created in the country despite increased remittances, foreign investment and capital flows. Also last week, a federal minister told the National Assembly that the total number of unemployed in the country was estimated to be 3.31 million.
In the government’s Economic Survey 2000-2001, unemployment was estimated to be six per cent, with the figure of unemployed given as 2.4 million of the total work force of 41.2 million.
A measure of the depressing job market scenario can be gauged from the following example: one foreign oil company in Pakistan received over 18,000 applications for a position that it had advertised. Another multinational oil company in Pakistan revealed in January that it had received 8,000 job applications for employment without even advertising for any vacant position.
The desperate situation of Pakistani job seekers begs the question: what has governments past and present been doing to improve employment opportunities for the country’s ever increasing work force? Has increasing employment opportunities ever been made a major objective of economic planning in this surplus labour country?
The high incidence of poverty in Pakistan is but a reflection of employment being ignored in the framework of economic planning. In recent years the government has acknowleged that poverty is a critical problem, and international agencies are ever willing to shower Islamabad with billions of dollars in aid to help battle poverty.
But is any of this aid being translated into a comprehensive economic plan that could produce enough gainful employment opportunities for the 3.31 million who are unemployed and the millions more who will be entering the labour force henceforth?
Last week’s reports that the health ministry intends to have 30,000 more lady health workers by 2005 and that the Punjab government will be inducting 10,000 more people into the police department may be encouraging news for some of the unemployed. But it is also obvious that although the government is the biggest employer in the country, its ability by itself to absorb the expanding work force is limited.
The report last month that the government had already directed termination of the services of some 10,000-12,000 of the estimated 20,000 federal government employees who were earlier declared surplus by the new committee for restructuring and rightsizing is an indication of that limitation.
The only thing Pakistani governments have been encouraging is manpower export as a major avenue of employment for its work force. According to one estimate, some 4.5 million Pakistanis found employment abroad between 1971-2002 through the help of hundreds of private overseas employment promoters (OEPs) and the government’s Overseas Employment Corporation (OEC).
Since the latter was set up in 1976 under the ministry of labour, manpower and overseas Pakistanis, OEC is estimated to have provided jobs overseas to some 120,000 Pakistanis, at the average rate of 2,000-8,000 people a year, ranging from illiterate labourers to highly qualified professionals.
Annual remittances from these Pakistanis working abroad, ranging between $1 to $2 billion, now form the country’s second biggest source of foreign exchange. The government sees manpower export as the major source of absorbing the Pakistani work force and it is said to have set a target of sending abroad for employment 100,000 Pakistanis annually.
But with hundreds of thousands of new entrants into the labour market in Pakistan every year, the government certainly needs to look at other major avenues of employment for its people apart from manpower export.
Besides, although manpower export may be helping to bring in foreign exchange, to what extent has this actually helped to make a dent in the country’s ever-growing surplus labour problem? Have remittances been translated into the kind of productive investment in Pakistan that can help generate jobs for the hundreds of thousands of others unable to find employment in the local job market?
Remittances and foreign investment are useful only if they add to the productive capacity and development of the country. If remittances by overseas Pakistanis are used for little more than supporting their families and buying homes in Pakistan, this will not have the kind of positive impact on the economy that investment in activities that help to generate more foreign exchange for the country could have.
The question is why have remittances not been directed and channelled in a big way into economically productive ventures in Pakistan.
PRAISING the Sindh Assembly for unanimously adopting a resolution against the Thal canal project, Ibrat writes that while the people of Sindh were agitating against the Kalabagh dam, news of the construction of the controversial canal had struck them like a thunderbolt. The military government refused to pay any heed to the protest of Sindh people and launched the canal project.
Now that the Sindh Assembly has endorsed the will of the people, a session of the Council of Common Interests should be immediately convened to discuss the canal issue, the daily says.
It adds that presenting Punjab’s interest as those of the federation and rejecting the stand of other provinces as against the federal interests has unfortunately become a tradition. This discriminatory approach should now be abandoned to give the small provinces some breathing space.
Irrigation experts from Sindh have proven in technical terms that water released into the Thal canal will not only add to the water shortage in the already water-starved province but also block the water flow downstream from Kotri. This, Ibrat says, will prove to be a death knell for agriculture below Kotri and the Indus delta. Insistence on the construction of the canal should be abandoned and a sympathetic hearing should be given to Sindh at the CCI meeting when it is convened.
Kawish welcomes another assembly resolution on the need to ensure the teaching of Sindhi language in government as well as private educational institutions of the province. It says that in the past, such resolutions were opposed by some members of Sindh Assembly which had created a rift among different sections of the population. This time the resolution was not opposed by any member, which is a good omen for the future of Sindh.
The daily points out that the teaching of Sindhi at schools was made mandatory way back in 1971, but most private schools have been violating this law, of which no notice has been taken. Now that the assembly has paid attention to this issue, it should also keep in mind that the teaching of Sindhi cannot be ensured merely by adopting a resolution. Concrete measures must be taken to achieve the objective.
Sach writes that after the alliance among religio-political parties, sectarian killings had stopped for a while. But the massacre of nine people outside an Imambargah in Karachi suggests that religious extremists have again become active and this time just before the arrival of Muharram. In order to foil the evil intentions of the terrorists, it is imperative that the culprits of recent bloodshed are soon arrested and quickly awarded exemplary punishment.
Referring to the statement of the Sindh minister for local bodies against kutchi abadis, Tameer-i-Sindh points out that a number of illegal settlements have sprouted in coastal areas and suburbs of the city, which are populated by Bengalis, Burmese and Afghans.
On the other hand, a number of villages inhibited by the indigenous people of the megalopolis also fall in the category of kutchi abadis. Ironically, these settlements are still deprived of civic amenities.
The daily proposes that the government should provide amenities to colonies
and ownership rights to their residents besides taking legal action against illegal settlements of aliens on the outskirts of Karachi.