ISLAMABAD, Dec 4: Speakers at the launching ceremony of a report titled “Pakistan Employment Trends-2008” at the ILO auditorium here on Thursday observed that the country has great potential for producing quality manpower essential for attaining sustainable economic growth.

They said Pakistan was making gradual progress towards improving its labour market and providing them a decent environment at work-places.

The ceremony was organised the by Ministry of Labour and Manpower in collaboration with the ILO.

Federal labour and manpower secretary Asif Hayat Malik said the government was working on a project to set up labour market information and analysis units at the provincial level to maintain data regarding the available workforce in the country.

He said effective policies were under way at all levels to make the younger generation more useful citizens to fight and eliminate poverty from the society.

UN resident coordinator in Pakistan Fikret Akcura said opportunities of productive and decent employment were essential to improve living standard of any society.

“The UN would extend all possible assistance to Pakistan for improving living standards of its people. UN is already assisting in various sectors like education, agriculture, environment and health,” he added.

He said the UN was joining hands with Pakistan for the promotion of manpower sector, which would enable it to get more share in the world markets.

UNDP’s country director Alvaro Rodriguez said despite financial constraints Pakistan has gained sufficient progress in the sector of small and medium enterprises and women who constitute half of the population were getting better share in employment.

The salient features of the report are:

Employment-to-population ratios indicate the ability of an economy to provide employment, which are still much lower for women than for men in Pakistan. Although female employment ratios increased significantly from 13.9 per cent in 2000 to 19.4 per cent between in 2007 - merely, a fifth of working age women over the age of 15 actually work, whereas almost eight out of 10 men do.

The relatively high employment-to-population ratios of almost 80 per cent for men are of concern as they point towards a likely abundance of low quality jobs in the country.

Men seem to benefit more from improvements in the labour market. In 2007, the share of men with a wage and salaried job was at 41.5 per cent, much higher than that for females (at 25.1 per cent), reflecting a situation in which the few wage and salaried jobs that are created tend to go to men rather than women.

—APP