BY Abdul Ghani
ISLAMABAD: Human capital development is inextricably linked with economic development. It is coherently related to the progress and prosperity of a nation. The ongoing phase of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has the potential to bring extensive opportunities to the unemployed youth of Pakistan.
According to a research conducted by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), 31 percent of educated youth are unemployed in the country. This worrisome situation can be reversed by imparting the required set of skills to the youth.
It is a noticeable fact that Pakistan has been producing a greater number of engineers and university graduates in multiple disciplines and fields. According to the Pakistan Engineering Council Report 2021, over 100,000 engineers are jobless in Pakistan. This manifests the dearth of skills and training for engineers during academics and afterward. As a result, the CPEC projects were run mainly by Chinese Engineers at initial stages.
Talking to WealthPK, Dr. Amanat Ali, Assistant Professor and researcher at the School of Economics, Quaid Azam University, Islamabad, said during the initiation of CPEC, there was an extensive gap in the ratio between the Chinese and Pakistani labour force. It stood at 58:42 and 37:63 respectively in 2018 during the construction and operational phases of some of these projects, he said. “The ratio on operational projects for Phase-II of the CPEC had improved to 50:50,” he added.
Dr. Amanat attributed this improvement in human capital to the training of Pakistani engineers, entrepreneurs, and other professionals by Chinese firms during the construction phase.
He said that Pakistan had adduced its capacity in building human capital in terms of processing machinery, supply chain tracking and monitoring, marketing, skill-building, managing, and training.
This multibillion-dollar project is expected to open significant avenues of employment for domestic labour force, especially after the establishment of the proposed Special Economic Zones (SEZs). However, as this development takes shape, job requirements would gradually become more demanding. However, Pakistan needs to focus on improving the level of human capital in the economy so as to ensure that both the existing and the incoming labour forces are skilled enough to meet the growing technical requirements of the evolving nature of work.
In Phase-II, it is essential for the authorities concerned to equip the young unemployed graduates with skills. This means extensive focus is required yet on the human capital development of the young graduates so that the Pakistani workforce gains an upper hand in the highly technical work in the ongoing phase.
However, Pakistan needs to take some more pragmatic steps to increase the capacity of human capital. First, the government has to resource the already under-functioning vocational training programs. There is a need to increase the area of skill enhancement training for the youth. For instance, core professional training for fresh graduates and engineers are inadequate. The inclusion of graduate training will certainly bring a greater dividend for the unskilled labour force in the country.
Secondly, there is a need for the university graduates to get training during their final terms before they enter the job market. Rather than pushing them into lengthy and unproductive syllabus books, the students must be given projects as compulsory training. This will bring immense human capital to the market which could eventually be utilized by the longer-term projects such as the CPEC.
