A different perspective on Unemployment in Pakistan

Over the years, people from different backgrounds have written and said so much on the unemployment situation in Pakistan.  Similarly, over the years, different government has came up with different programs to bring down unemployment level, If not end it.  In order to achieve that they have invested massively in creating different jobs in both public and private sector.

Private sector is one of the main avenues through which the nations across the globe create their unemployment opportunities. In Pakistan too, different governments have made efforts to develop the investment environment and policies to facilitate the growth and development of the private sector.

However, I do believe that the policy makers have made one fundamental flaw in their policy. There is a difference in setting up an infrastructure and ensuring its operation, and the later requires some important inputs in doing so.  Availability of the quality manpower is one of the key inputs in the running, operation and it is sustainability of the business in the long term.

Due to high unemployment rates and massive labor pool, the policy makers have not done enough to address to the needs of the private sector with respect to the availability of the quality and skilled labor force.

During my stay at leading Internet Service Provider (ISP) of the twin cities, I came to realize the difference of possessing degree and actually knowing something.   As I was involved in conducting several initial candidate screening/filtering interviews, I observed that it is very hard for the company to find a candidate fulfilling their minimum criteria.

During our one such campaign of recruiting the telecom engineer, I interviewed a distinction holder, who was a recent pass out from a renowned public sector university of the capital.  During the interview, he failed to even provide the definition of the term, in which he supposedly has earned his Baccalaureate degree.

Government, if they want to move forward, need to realize that their labor pool is rich of unskilled labor and given the tough economic conditions, no business will risk to employee an unskilled labor.  Now, as the companies stop recruiting from the existing labor pool it will continue to expand. Particularly with the addition of massive educational institutes pass outs in labor pool each year and even twice a year, soon a stage will reach when this unemployment, will eventually push the government and the society at whole into an unemployment black hole.

The need of the hour is that the educational institutes start producing quality resources in the labor pool. For this to happen, a fundamental shift is required from delivering information (what is written in the books) to the imparting knowledge, which is far destination even after the implementation of Tenure Track System and revision in pays of the teachers.

The mantra of blind foldedly injecting more and more resources has failed. It is high time that we take a different approach to tackle the Pakistan’s unemployment issue.

Posted by Abdul Basit Abbasi on Oct 20 2011. Filed under Education, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry