KARACHI: The regional office of Overseas Employment Corporation (OEC) has arranged jobs for a paltry 1,103 workers/ professionals in Saudi Arabia, Libya, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Oman, Malaysia, New Guinea , Nigeria, Sharjah, Dubai and Kuwait during the year 2003 as against 990 jobs in 2002 and 1,050 in 2001.

The OEC has no specific target for sending people abroad, but it manages to send 3,500 to 4,000 persons abroad on yearly basis.

An official at the OEC said the recent agreement with Malaysia for the export of manpower - about 200,000 over the years - would help in cutting the number of jobless in the country.

He said other potential countries being focussed for "our manpower include Lebanon, Bosnia, South Korea, Iraq and Kuwait".

The OEC official told Dawn that the corporation had processed more than 130,000 cases for foreign employment since its inception in 1976.

He was of the view that this figure in itself was indicative of degree of confidence of foreign employers and capabilities of the corporation. "We are constantly striving to improve our output and standards," he added.

In view of the rising unemployment and to check this trend the proper functioning of employment exchanges and the OEC could play a significant role if the government takes practical steps for streamlining the workforce of the country.

The main hurdle in exporting manpower on a big scale is unavailability of basic data regarding skilled/unskilled labour to select suitable persons for the openings available in different countries. The OEC has started working on this line and has developed a data base of over 30,000 persons in different occupational categories. Although it is very small number in comparison to total workforce, by the time a complete data base would be in place to meet the demand of the foreign employers if the OEC succeeds in functioning on modern lines.

To have the true picture of unemployment level and the performance of employment exchanges in Sindh, Provincial Secretary Labour, Manpower & Overseas Pakistanis, Raja Mohammad Abbas was reached by Dawn several times over telephone but the secretary seemed not interested in sharing his views on the issue and referred this scribe to his subordinate, Wali Mohammad Bambro, Director Manpower in the ministry. Mr Wali was also contacted many times to know the actual position of employment exchanges, but he was pre-occupied with some important assignments.

Efforts were also made to reach Federal Secretary Labour Khawaja Ijaz Sarwar but his secretary informed this scribe that the federal secretary was out of the country. In his absence, Senior Joint Secretary, Ministry of Labour, Mirza Akhtar Iqbal, looks after the affairs, but was too preoccupied and could not enlighten Dawn of the performance of OEC and employment exchanges and their future strategies.

According to unofficial data, some 58 employment exchanges - 34 in Punjab, 17 in Sindh and seven in NWFP - which stopped functioning earlier were reactivated in 2002 by the government.

Despite several attempts official data regarding performance of these exchanges could not be made available as the officials of the labour ministry did not bother to provide statistics for the reasons best known to them.