ISLAMABAD – The government is all set to launch its first-ever national emigration policy to devise comprehensive strategies to regulate welfare processes of intending emigrants and protect the rights of their families.
This was revealed by the officials of the Ministry Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development while briefing the concerned committee of National Assembly (NA).
The NA’s Standing committee on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development met here at Overseas Pakistanis Foundation (OPF) with the Member of National Assembly (MNA) Sheikh Fayyaz ud Din in the chair.
The committee was briefed about the working and performance of the Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and OPF as this was the second meeting of the committee since the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led government came to power.
The Federal Secretary Pervaiz Ahmed Junejo informed the panel that the ministry had prepared the policy draft and shared it with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), Ministry of Education and the departments concerned at the provincial level.
After getting the feedback of all the stakeholders, he said the policy would be placed before the Federal Cabinet within three months once its modalities get finalized.
Unfortunately, the country could not manage to formulate a single emigration policy in the past; he said and added that there was no database compiled about the workforce of Pakistan, required to absorb country’s manpower in the international job markets.
As per plans, the secretary said the department would develop a national level database of a trained workforce which would inform the National Vocational and Technical Commission, Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority (TEVTA) and Overseas Employment Corporation (OEC) about the current employment opportunities available in the various countries.
The ministry would conduct the International job markets analysis on the basis of this database and train them at par with global standards, he added.
MNA Mahreen Razzaq Bhutto was astonished to hear that there was no data about manpower and she questioned the ministry’s performance in this regard to compete the foreign employment markets.
She regretted the ministry was not competing for international standards and suggested to gather a complete data of the country’s labour-force at earliest as the employment was currently one of the major issue confronting by the country’s youth.
Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Overseas Pakistanis Sayed Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari agreeing with Mahreen over ministry’s pathetic state of the affairs in the past and assured her that it would work day and night to overcome prevailing issues.
“We are stuffed with a lot of baggage left by the previous regimes and need time to rectify the situation,” Zulfikar remarked.
He said the ministry would start delivering soon according to the public aspirations as the Prime Minister Imran Khan was himself monitoring its affairs and overseas Pakistanis were very close to the PM’s heart.
MNA Dr Haider Ali Khan emphasized on providing the Right to Representation in the Parliament to the Pakistani Diaspora as they were given the right to vote.
MNA Syed Javed Husnain said that Pakistan had the dual-nationality agreement with only19 countries and in other countries, the expatriates had to give up their Pakistani nationality for having the host country’s citizenship due to non-availability of such agreement.
He urged the committee to call the Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials in the next meeting to have their feedback for the purpose.
MNA Sobia Khan said the same committee should take the initiative and send the recommendations to Parliament in this regard.
The committee members unanimously appreciated the Prime Minister Imran Khan’s efforts which help the release of over 2107 jailed expatriates and sought the complete details of the freed Pakistani prisoners.
The meeting was attended by MNA Aurangzaib Khan Khichi, Fazal Muhammad Khan, Syed Akbar Ali Shah and officials of the departments concerned.
