THIS refers to the report “Jobless man ends life by jumping off mall’s third floor” (Dec 1), according to which, a young man committed suicide at a Karachi shopping mall after felling dejected and depressed because of unemployment.

Despite being educated and seeking employment desperately, he could not secure a job and that pushed him towards taking the extreme step to end his misery. One can imagine the level of frustration and mental agony the young man must have been going through in life that forced him to take such a desperate measure, which resolved nothing; just took his life.

According to the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), 24 per cent educated people are jobless countrywide, which is certainly not what we were promised or what we were hoping.

Such tragic incidents speak volumes about the government’s failure and the apathetic attitude towards the misery of the common man, in general, and the young generation — the future of Pakistan — in particular.

There is no iota of doubt that the tall claims made by the government to turn Pakistan into a model state remained just that; claims. A string of crises one after the other has pushed the masses into a ditch where they wail unheard.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other lenders are dictating terms and we have to live with the harsh conditionalities. The misery may never ‘end’, but nobody knows when it might even subside. It is this uncertainty that is pushing people towards the extreme.

Hasan Afzaal
Karachi

Published in Dawn, December 5th, 2021