During my export marketing visits of GCC countries in 1992 I studied work ethos and cultural orientation of our work force in Middle East.

My interest in this study was triggered by the conduct of our Saudi distributors at Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam, all of whom are Pakistanis with titular partnership of Saudis.

On my first visit I found that almost 60 per cent of their sales staff was of Pakistani origin. But on my second visit I was surprised to find hardly 25 per cent workers of Pakistan, the rest were replaced by Indians and Bangladeshis or Philippians.

I asked the proprietors about the causes of such a drastic change even jolting their patriotic sentiments.

Their response was very straight and candid, and they said that firstly they have to ensure the level of operating efficiency required by you as representatives of principal and secondly they have to make their operation healthy and profitable with committed, cooperative and satisfied work force.

They explained to me work ethos and social attitude of Pakistani workers vis-a-vis Indians, Bangladeshis and Filipinos and said that Pakistani workers were no doubt more hardworking and productive than other nationalities when they were given the job for initial couple of months.

As they make some money and particularly after a trip back home in Pakistan, there conduct changes drastically. If there is one doing driver’s job, he refuses point blank to load even one carton in the case of any urgency or absence of loaders. likewise they also incite other workers to follow their precedence.

As Pakistani workers settled down in their job and get to know a bit about the operations of the company, they start conjecturing up how such profit the management is making and then put up demand for increase in their salary individually and some time even collectively by involving other workers in this kind of game playing.

Moreover their loyalty to the company and the management is also very low and they try to switch over for the job even for small salary increase.

On the other side the workers from India, Bangladesh, Philippines and Sri Lanka show none of these negative work ethics, they never refuse to do additional or alternative job when ever required to do.

They do not smell around about company’s profitability nor raise demand for salary increase. They are never involved in unionist activities. They show high level of loyalty to the management and seldom get tempted with small increase for switchover.

So I analyzed that disenchantment of the management with Pakistani work force was on two accounts;

(a) work ethos and

(b) cultural reorientation. Both these drawbacks call for a proper training and social orientation by overseas employees federation and our federal ministry of manpower through private training organizations and NGO’s.

This is pertinent not only to create a more receptive and conducive environment for our growing manpower in the Middle East but also to ensure lasting career assignments our present work force in the Middle East which is a source of substantial foreign currency remittances and increase in our GNP and per capita income.