Pak manpower export continues despite global recession

[LahoreEstate]

Friday, February 20, 2009
By Tariq Butt

ISLAMABAD: Contrary to international trends, the manpower export from Pakistan continues at an old pace despite closure of hundreds of mega projects in the labour-intensive Gulf market because of severe recession, officials have claimed.

However, Pakistan has no mechanism in place to gauge exodus of its workers from different countries, including the UAE and Saudi Arabia, one official told The News. He said the Bureau of Immigration recorded that a total of 37,515 Pakistanis departed for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in November, 28,814 in December and 33,817 in January this year for employment as per the contracts signed by them with different companies.

“There has been no significant reduction in manpower export from Pakistan despite a difficult situation that has hit the market where most of the Pakistanis go for jobs,” the official said. But there are reports indicating that several Pakistanis who recently went to the Gulf countries after signing agreements with various employers had to come back after finding the projects for which they were hired closed.

Such people suffered double losses — they paid huge amount to recruitment agents and got no jobs. “I went to Dubai two weeks back to work as an excavator operator but came back after a few days as the employer told me he had no job to offer,” said Nadeem Hamid.

The official said the impact of any large-scale arrivals of Pakistani expatriates back to the country had not been felt so far. He said this would happen only after the contract periods, ranging from two to three years, of the overseas workers would expire and the agreements would not be extended.

He said the government had received reports of closure of a large number of projects in Dubai where hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis were working. An official of the Overseas Employment Corporation said a small number of workers sent to South Korea and Malaysia continued to remain in these countries.

Notwithstanding the Pakistani government’s optimistic view, low-paid Asian workers who toil long days to build the skyscrapers of Dubai have become the latest victims of the global financial crisis, as companies are running short of business and money, said a report.

For many years, the Gulf emirate was a magnet for South Asian workers who fed the booming economy with cheap manpower — from cleaners and gardeners to skilled and unskilled builders.

Another report spoke about severe financial crisis being faced by several projects in Saudi Arabia where workers were in deep trouble. Yet another recent report said a large number of foreign nationals from among those who had got resident visas in Dubai were cancelling them everyday.

“People are abandoning hundreds of cars in the Dubai airport parking lot every day before flying back to their native countries as they can’t afford to live there and can’t pay their instalments,” A Jamal, who recently returned from Dubai, told this correspondent. He said leasing companies and banks were getting possession of the abandoned vehicles, which they would sell in the near future after completing necessary procedural formalities.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=163568