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Brain drain from Pakistan to hurt long-term growth'
LAHORE: Pakistan is facing brain drain. Experts in their respective fields are migrating from Pakistan to secure their future. The outflow of human capital spells gloom for the long-term growth of the country in near future.
On the other hand Pakistani companies have been hiring foreign experts for consulting their problems they are facing during their businesses, productions and other issues which causing huge loss of foreign exchange as the foreign consultants send back the money to their native countries.
In an interview to The News, Chairman Pak-Denmark Business Council Abid Ali expressed that Pakistani government spent billions of rupees for education of the experts, but unfortunately these people are migrating abroad due to non-existence of the market according to their capabilities.
Although the country has been receiving millions of dollars in shape of remittance which these experts send back to Pakistan every year, these remittance are not a substitute of the expertise of educated and expert people, he remarked.
Talking about his experience, Abid mentioned that a large number of Pakistani students securing top positions from different universities had been serving in European companies while many of them have settled there permanently after getting immigration nationality or citizenship of these countries.
The expatriate Pakistanis just visit the country to meet their relatives which is very disappointing for the future growth of the country, he observed. He said some four million Pakistani are settled in Europe, USA and Canada and not sending money back to the country. On the other hand a large number of Pakistani experts have been working in Middle East and Saudi Arabia, he said adding that due to strict nationality and citizenship procedures rate of remittances from these countries were higher than those from Europe, USA and Canada.
He was of the view that the developed nations always protect the experts of their country and stop their migrating movement by providing them incentives. There is no shortage of talent and mind in Pakistan but the need is to protect them and control the migration of technical experts, doctors, engineers, economist and others in order to maintain the growth, he remarked.
He said that due to non availability of good options our youth is feels disappointed about their future and many young people are thinking and planning to go abroad and get settled there. He urged the government to give attractive packages to the highly qualified Pakistanis to control the migration of such experts.
Courtesy: The News, 12/8/2008
