January 07, 2008	Monday	Zilhaj 27, 1428

In his book, “The End of Work: the decline of global workforce and the dawn of the post-market era”, published in 1995, Jeremy Rifkin predicted that, the “wholesale” substitution of machines for workers will make mass formal employment disappear in societies. Unemployment, would emerge as the single most pressing social issue of the twenty-first century.

Rifkin had dissected the phenomenon of globalisation that triggered massive lay-offs in developed countries like the US, Germany, France and UK in the wake of downsizing and corporate re-engineering and the introduction of new farm machinery and biotechnology which made millions of labourers working in agriculture sector totally irrelevant.

Rifkin had analysed how the Third Sector Organisations (TSOs) could help generate new jobs not only in the developed world, but also in developing countries like Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

The non-profit and voluntary civil society organisations and philanthropic bodies form the Third Sector. The sector has the potential to create employment by delivering services in the areas of education health, environment, democracy and human rights often neglected by the corporate sector and the government.

In fact, over the last few decades, governments faced with the issue of fiscal deficits and a curtailed role in doing businesses are unable to allocate more funds to the social sectors.

Pakistan is also witnessing mass layoffs inrecently privatised organisations like the Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) where 33,000 employees were offered a voluntary separation scheme (VSS).

Banking and other areas of the services sector are also faced with the same dilemma: the golden hand shake scheme of the National Bank (NBP) and the United Bank Ltd (UBL).

Recently, due to extreme political pressure, the Zaraee Tarraqiati Bank (ZTBL) had to reverse a decision of firing 1,800 low-skilled workers while making its office computer-friendly.

The hospitality and tourism industry seems to be in deeper crisis ever since the 9/11 incident and now the threats of suicide bombings and militancy in Swat.

So, the introduction of technology, restructuring and corporate re-engineering are slowly but continuously making people jobless in spite of the employment generation recently seen in the fields of telecommunication and media.

It is quite natural that the biggest challenge for next political set-up will be the creation of new jobs in an economy that seems to be anything but diversified.

With an official estimated workforce of 48.3 million and 6.6 per cent unemployment rate, the new economic managers, like their predecessors, will definitely find it hard to recruit the “frustrated” unemployed irrespective of what promises various political parties make during their ongoing election campaigns.

More jobs can’t be created in the traditional agriculture sector where the use of basic machineries has considerably slashed the number of labourers it required a few decades ago.

Millions of low-skilled and less educated youth across the country are unable to find a place in the same fields where there parents use to work.

The land their parents cultivated can’t simply feed their ever-growing family size. So, workforce is flowing out from the farm sector. But, the question is, where to channelise it?

The Third Sector may provide some relief, for it can reduce, to a reasonable level, the unemployment rate. The G-8 member elite states are channeling their millions of unemployed (mostly frustrated) youth to the Third Sector because their agriculture sectors do not need workforce while companies are busy in layoffs in a bid to remain competitive internationally.

With the turn of the century, there were more than 350,000 voluntary organisations in the United Kingdom, with a total income in excess of 17 billion sterling pound, or four per cent of the gross national product.

In France, the Third Sector has already begun to emerge as a social force. In recent years, more than 43,000 voluntary associations were created making France’ social economy about six per cent of the overall economy.

The Third Sector in Germany and Japan is playing a similar role.

Pakistan’s non-profit sector consists of 45,000 active organisations ranging from unregistered neighborhood/village community based bodies to registered, formal and more professional nationwide organisations, showed a survey conducted 2004.

These TSOs were served by 476,000 persons -264,000 paid employees and 212,000 volunteers. This accounted for more than four per cent of non-agricultural employment.

Based on the finding of a survey conducted by the Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC) in 2002, the bulk of non-profit organisations (40.5 per cent) are registered as societies, about 15 per cent as social welfare agencies and about six per cent as trusts.

More than 38 per cent of the organisations are unregistered of which about a tenth have applied for registered.

According to the first ‘National Survey of Individual Giving, 1998-99, most Pakistanis make charitable donations or volunteer their time each year, reaching an impressive aggregate of Rs70 billion.

Its estimated individual giving during 1998 as Rs30 billion which comprised Rs14 billion in zakat and Rs16 billion in non-zakat donations. Donations of gifts-in-kind amounted to Rs11 billion during 1998 and it was estimated that 1.6 billion hours of time was volunteered the same year.

Valued conservatively at an average wage rate of Rs150 per eight-hour day, the total value of time volunteered was Rs29 billion.

Adding these estimates, the people gave over Rs70 billion in cash/gifts, in kind and time in 1998.

The individual giving was estimated at Rs41 billion in cash and goods mostly to religious institutions (94 per cent). Religious faith was cited as the greatest motivation for 98 per cent of donors.

The October 2005 earthquake provided a great opportunity to exploit this sector by creating more jobs. For the first time, the non-governmental organisations had a chance to improve their image overshadowed by allegations of massive funds embezzlements and lack of delivery. And,many organisations succeeded in doing so.

But two years down the road, people in the earthquake hit areas are again pointing towards massive misuse of donations and funds by various NGOs with reports of distribution of fake cheques amidst suspicious disappearances of various organisations.

Things have reached to such a proportion that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has to intervene. Now, some drastic changes are needed to make this sector reliable and improve its image in the eyes of the local and foreign donors.

The first ever NGO Ordinance 2002 was a strong proof of the recognition of the operations of the TSOs by the government. In the 1990s, government initiatives to support the TSOs and encourage their participation in social service delivery included the Social Action Programme, the Rural Support Programmes, the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund, etc.

The new political set-up would have to come with a plan to make the Third Sector a responsible partner of the public and corporate sectors.

Some changes in the taxation system and other related legislations are needed to give a helping hand to voluntary and non-profit organisations at official level, but a mechanism is also needed to evaluate their performance as per the international best practices. Accountability and rewards also need to be instituted.

Pakistan’s Third Sector needs to be more broad-based and participatory than what it is today.

This is what seems to be the demand of the new global economic order in which the government is playing the role of facilitator and corporate re-engineering, privatisation and massive layoffs have become an integral part of the national economic order.