A small but significant incident in Sahiwal speaks volumes
Despite official hype about an alleged economic miracle, duly supported by selective statistics and often fudged figures, even a minor event can light up the reality better. The truth cannot remain hidden with a lively media and social media, which explains why both are being targeted in ominous advertisements. No petitioner dare challenge the government’s present blitz of self-congratulatory announcements, repeated nauseatingly on the favoured channels. Taxpayer’s money is being wasted unchecked on this distorted self-aggrandisement.
Another pathetic scene has been shown and reported umpteen times, without ever changing. The announcement of a few measly jobs draws thousands of aspirants, who wait with saintly patience in a line that stretches to the horizon. True to form, 57 openings in Grade one positions advertised by the Directorate of Colleges in Sahiwal, drew a regular army division of hopeful optimists, about 12,000 of them, who swamped the Government Postgraduate College Sahiwal cricket ground on Sunday. Another alarming, but now commonplace aspect in such cases, revealing the desperation of unemployment, was that menial posts of peons, laboratory attendants, drivers, kitchen staffers, conductors, midwives, sweepers, gardeners and watchmen, with matriculation as basic qualification, attracted about forty percent Bachelor and several Masters degree holders.
Millions of educated unemployed are just the tip of the country’s manpower dilemma. Competitive skills, imparted in state of the art institutions, both governmental and in the private sector, with modern machinery and techniques, are also denied it in a practical and meaningful manner. Because of this neglect, most of our workforce are only employed in lowly jobs in the Middle East, and are losing even blue-collar positions to better trained, English or Arabic speaking migrants from elsewhere. Inward remittances, one of the staples of our budget, have declined sharply.
The squabbling politicians with their misplaced priorities are nonchalant in tackling the major issues, they recoil timidly before a frontal challenge. With immediate and intensive acquisition of modern skills, our vast workforce can be gainfully employed in CPEC projects, otherwise it is condemned to be merely international coolies.
