How a crippled economy is forcing a valuable part of the workforce to leave their motherland

Two cousins, Imran Wazir, 23, and Abdul Salam, 25, declared to their families that they had decided to leave their village in northeastern Pakistan and pay an exorbitant sum of money to smugglers to reach Europe. According to relatives, they felt deprived of viable options at home. 

Mr. Wazir had felt increasingly burdened as the family’s breadwinner, and Mr. Salam had practically been attached to his cousin’s hip since childhood. Late one night in March, they bid farewell to their families and embarked on this arduous, seemingly endless journey through land, air and sea across four countries, in the hopes of reaching their destination.

According to a New York Times article by Christina Goldbaum, Mr. Wazir and Mr. Salam were two of the 104 Pakistanis who met their demise when a fishing boat, inundated with nearly 750 migrants capsized in the Mediterranean last month. The ship that capsized, Adriana, had set sail from eastern Libya and was bound for Italy. This has been reported as the “deadliest shipwreck” in the area for a decade. 

In December 2022, data released by Pakistan’s Bureau of Immigration revealed that more than 832,339 people had registered abroad for employment last year. That marks a more than 300% increase in the number of Pakistanis leaving the country to find greener pastures abroad.  

In a country teetering dangerously close to default, the term looming over our economy was ‘brain drain’ — an economic phenomenon where highly educated individuals from developing countries go to already developed countries to find better compensation for their services as well as better living and working conditions. Of the 832,339 people that migrated from Pakistan for work, only around 92,000 were doctors, engineers, IT specialists, accountants, and other ‘highly skilled’ workers. The rest were mostly traveling to the Gulf to work as laborers, masons, drivers, and other blue-collar positions. That more than anything points towards a different problem: poverty.  

However, with borders tightening across the world and restrictions soaring with legal immigration, many people resort to illegal border-crossings with the help of smugglers. And this route is obviously dangerous. Yet, excruciating poverty at homes leaves people with little choice.The situation has become so desperate that people are willing to gamble with their lives- and the Greek boat tragedy is a reflection of this. 

Diving into the problem

Of the 104 Pakistanis present on the ship, around 28 came from the hometown of Mr. Wazir and Mr. Salman, Bandi, a picturesque valley alongside the border with India, in the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir. The village is now enveloped with a cloud of grief and anger.

“I have not seen such a sad day in the village in my 60 years of life,” said Muhammad Majeed, a shopkeeper. “It’s like doomsday — the village has lost so many young, hard-working sons.”

The area, with a population of around 10,000 people, has a long history of men migrating abroad. It’s common for a family to have at least one son based in the Gulf or Europe, sending a portion of their salaries back home each month. 

At the stranglehold of violence between India and Pakistan, Bandi has been the centrestage for frequent cross-border shelling, which has destroyed homes and taken lives. Migration is perhaps the only means to escape violence and provide for families. Combined with Pakistan’s intensifying economic crisis, this trend has continued to rise. There are negligible prospects of decent jobs at home, and stories of people making it to Europe have inundated social media, amplifying the aspiration to migrate. 

Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have also long been a hub for human trafficking. The rising cost of living, skyrocketing inflation and ubiquitous unemployment have aggravated the dire situation.

Around 80% of the people moving abroad are unskilled or semi skilled laborers struggling to make ends meet at home. According to the Ministry’s report for 2022, out of the 832,339 emigrants, only 1,902 were highly qualified and 2,777 were highly skilled. In contrast to this, overwhelmingly 24,445 were unskilled.

“Pakistan has a high rate of unemployment. People are simply unable to find work here, especially the unskilled and semi skilled labor force. You’ll mostly find the working classes, employed as basic technicians, electricians, drivers and construction workers abroad. In most cases, they’re working in the Gulf countries (around 97%)- you’ll barely find such people working in Europe, Canada or the USA,” says Dr Muhammad Saleem, an economist. 

“The jobs are not highly salaried there either. You’ll typically find laborers earning PKR 35,000-45,000 per month, which is very less. It’s barely enough to provide for food at home. Most people working in Saudi Arabia earn 600-700 riyals per month. This is hardly equivalent to the minimum wage in Pakistan after deducting the living costs.”

This unmasks the excruciating tragedy that people can’t even make this much for themselves at home. “Alongside this, the living conditions for laborers are gruesome in the Gulf countries. People are cramped in tiny spaces to save costs,” adds Dr. Saleem.

Taimur Khan Jhagra, the former Provincial Minister of KP for Health and Finance, disagrees with this however. “The working conditions are tough here also. Most people want to get public jobs. However, only 8-10% are able to acquire those. What do the remaining 90% do? If they have access to foreign jobs, that’s actually a huge plus. I would see it as a positive sign.”

KP has a particularly high percentage of people moving abroad for work. KP only constitutes 18% of Pakistan’s population. However, 32% of the laborers traveling for overseas employment come from KP. This is a jarring figure, nearly double its share of Pakistan’s total population. 

People feel “there is no future and certainty in Pakistan anymore,” said Toqeer Gilani, a political leader in the Pakistani-administered part of Kashmir. “That has been gradually taking hold among the youth.”

Is there a flip-side? 

This is where the question of remittances comes in. The common perception is that the foreign migration of labor forces is disastrous for the local economy because of bright minds and capable hands suddenly being fewer in circulation. The real situation is more nuanced than this simplistic worldview. As a matter of fact, the human development statistics from KP indicate that both education and healthcare have been improving over the last two decades. 

According to Dr. Saleem, this is predominantly attributed to foreign remittances. “The income levels have slightly improved due to their influx. This has contributed to some local development. After winning the general elections in 2018, the PTI government promised to empower KP. In reality, it doesn’t have anything to do with the rising income levels- which are mainly credited to foreign remittances. In general also, political governments have not had any substantive role to play in facilitating economic activity in the province.”

Jhagra also elucidates the bright side of this phenomenon.

“This is actually a matter of pride for Pakistan. It has significantly contributed to the local economy in the shape of remittances being returned to the local community. Pakistan owes a debt of gratitude to these workers” asserts Jhagra. “We shouldn’t worry about the proportion of people migrating overseas for work. Rather, the challenge is to upscale them so that they may find work beyond the blue collar jobs.”

“Annual remittances worth PKR 40-50 million come from the Pashtun diaspora alone. As a former minister in the KP government, I would think of strategies to further upscale this population. Even within blue collar jobs, they should ascend to higher levels of pay and eventually enter into the service economy. I have spent many years of my life in the Gulf. Yet I have never walked into Starbucks and seen a Pakistani employee. These workers should eventually make it there.”

“However, this is not to posit that blue collar jobs abroad are not important. They’re adding considerable value to our economy. Their counterparts here are sitting as clerks in the government. The culture of paper-pushing is rampant in Pakistan.In fact, foreign remittances is one of the few areas wherein Pakistan has some advantage in terms of its population size.”

This nevertheless presents a paradox. On the one hand, foreign remittances substantively contribute to local development. On the other hand, they are productive only because the national economy is unable to sustain the local population. Instead of reaping the benefits of foreign remittances, should the government create more employment opportunities within the country?

“It’s not as simple as that,” exclaims Jhagra, “the moment it becomes disadvantageous to work abroad, people won’t go there. Despite the 18th amendment, the conditions required to foster economic prosperity are not in place. The central government including the bureaucracy is complicit in this. The KP government  for example has no comparative advantage in facilitating economic growth. KP produces the bulk of Pakistan’s electricity and gas. Yet, it pays the same rate for electricity and gas as the other provinces.” 

Therefore, the real problem lies in how the federal government operates. More precisely, it’s the lack of devolution of power to the provinces. “Provinces can’t do much at the end of the day. If an investor wants to build a hotel in KP, sure we’ll facilitate them. However, there is so much red tape in Islamabad. This makes the process extremely cumbersome and arduous. Once you remove the red tape, we’ll happily cooperate in building the hotel,” claims Jhagra. 

The issue of smuggling

However, the debate is not as black and white. It’s complicated by the issue of smuggling. With border restrictions across the world and hindrances with legal immigration, many people resort to illegal border-crossings with the help of smugglers. And this journey is deeply precarious- a matter of life and death crudely speaking.

Smugglers have profited from this sense of instability. They promise young men a coveted future in Europe in exchange for a lump sum of $7,000 to $14,000. Mr. Wazir and Mr. Salam borrowed money from friends and pooled their savings to each pay the $8,100 smuggler fee. Despite their fathers dissuasion, they seemed adamant in their pursuits. 

According to a New York Times article by Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Karam Shoumal, the migrants had collectively paid $3.5 million to be smuggled to Italy.

On that night in March, Mr. Wazir and Mr. Salman boarded a bus for a 3-day journey to Karachi, from where they flew to the United Arab Emirates, then Egypt and finally Libya. Tragedy struck when they boarded the Adriana to travel to Italy. 

On 19 June, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan declared a day of mourning for Pakistanis who died on the boat, and ordered a crackdown on the people involved in trafficking Pakistanis to Europe. He said on Twitter that law-enforcement agencies had been asked “to tighten the noose around individuals involved in the heinous act of human smuggling.” 

Since then, Pakistani authorities have been arresting people believed to be involved in the trafficking of several migrants. One of the people arrested has been accused of charging migrants around 2.3 million Pakistani rupees — about $8,000 — to enter Europe unlawfully, according to the police.