September 11, 2006	Monday	Sha'aban 17, 1427

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

ISLAMABAD, Sept 10: Pakistan has yet to come up with broad- based national policies to find market access for its skilled and unskilled workers in the rich countries, leaving the room for Indian labourers who are dominating the world labour market.

A number of major impediments to freer movement of natural persons remained due to widespread use of economic need tests in a discretionary way, creating a major barrier to trade. There are also major problems with visa requirements, work permits, qualification standards and licensing regulations.

A UNDP report titled “Trade in services: movement of natural persons (MNPs), a case study of Pakistan” conducted by Tahir Hasnain pointed out various lapses in policy formulation to exploit the full potential of the sector besides a range of policy recommendations.

The report said Pakistan had been active during GATS negotiations to raise voice against barriers to access market in developed countries. At the national level, however, Pakistan has not done well to optimally utilise this window. The experience of some other countries has been relatively good.

India, for instance, took this seriously and due to its long- term policies and proper preparation it is now dominating the world labour market. In contrast, Pakistan never took this serious and as a result there has been no research, no institutional preparation and no big effort to acquire labour market and no required training to workers accordingly.

In this backdrop, Pakistan should not depend/emphasise too much on workers’ movement due to three reasons: firstly because of fewer markets availability; secondly because we do not have comparative advantage and will not be able to compete with Indian and Chinese workers, and thirdly, the idea of free movement of workers may cause brain drain and lead to serious social consequences.

It was recommended that Pakistan should strengthen national policies to cope with the issue of unemployment; efforts should be made to have coordination between the labour-exporting countries so that they could formulate a joint policy which in turn would help prevent exploitation of their workers in labour- importing countries.

There is a need to ensure rights and eliminate abuse of migrants in their countries of residence. Among such migrants, it is necessary to make a distinction between legal and illegal migrants.

Pakistan should export research-based categories of skilled workers and for sensitive service sectors we should be rather defensive as it may create serious brain drain and loss of human capital we need in the country right now. Under the trade in MNPs, we should try to explore higher export of workers in various other sectors such as construction, agriculture, technical and service industries.

During the study it was learnt that there was great demand for Muslim nurses in the EU, US and Middle Eastern markets and if a well-researched and planned strategy is followed Pakistan can take advantage of this.

The report observed that an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis working abroad were unskilled and being exploited in many ways. There is a need to provide updated knowledge, skill and other relevant training to the migrant workers which would enable them to earn more and get better working conditions abroad.

According to the report, there is also essential need to explore sectors/occupations where women workers can safely be exported. Women workers can be rather more useful as they would send more remittances and generate more jobs by trying to settle other members of the family in the host country.

Sectors where women workers can be exported are packing, dress designing, textile, food processing, garments, reception and secretarial occupations, artistic works, beauticians, bookkeeping and banking, etc.