Pakistani Frustrated Youth

The future of Pakistan and the people who would take Pakistan further ahead in the development and progress in all field is none other than our “Youth”.

The challenges our Youth is facing is higher cost of studies, joblessness, no career counselling, no guidance from elders to how to survive as their elders are busy in making money to ensure bright future of their kids. The prevailing situation of un-certainity and disrespect for the people who are not considered as the members of Semi rich or elite class has pushed alot of youngsters to flee from country in search of jobs and further education with long term plans to get settled abroad where they get more respect despite their status of a third rate citizen. And above all, the justice system is far better than what we have got here.

Being a young energetic man or a women, every one has certain goals in life which he or she pursues in life. The hopelessness and frustration builds up when equal opportunities in education and then in the job hunt are not being offered to them. This results in loosing able men and women who could have been the key to our success as a nation in the long run.
We have made education a profitable business, those who could afford to study from IBA, LUMS, GIK, AGHA KHAN UNIVERSITY, QAU etc are more likely to end up having good jobs always up their sleeves. On the other hand more talented and promising people which have studied from slightly lower rating institute struggle to get a good start.
Our government has lost focus on the development and prosperity of our youth and thus giving the Nation a major set back by creating a major short fall of talented people. Now the irony of the situation is that even we have quite a few talented people in the field, a new tend has started which is to hire foreign consultants to come and do our job at a much higher cost and equally good local talent is ignored. There are very few job consultation agencies in Pakistan who could keep a track of the best people in the field and get them organised and offer them the best available possibilities. The ones already working charge very high services fees which can go up to one complete salary and or at times even more than that. Good jobs are always given at references and through by passing the normal hiring procedure which again deprives of the real talent on laying their hands on a a reasonable job. If we carefully analyze the situation, we would find a lot of mis-fits and non professional people sitting at key positions in various governmental organizations and NGOs and thus giving a slower growth rate to such organizations.
Its a dilemma and point of concern for all of us that our youth not all of them but majority of it is looking for short cuts in life as they have seen people making their life style turning in to a high class living in the matter of months through earning by un fair means. Have a look at the government expenditure on Education sector and their own spending on visits abroad and maintaining hifi protocol. A person’s worth is no more in his Character, education and family back ground, its all about having enough money in the bank whether earned with honesty or by hook or crook.

I see a lot of young boys and girls with little or no hope in their eyes and are frustrated cause of Nepotism and limited opportunities for them. Advertisements for jobs are given in newspapers for a formality, people are hired even before giving out the advertisements, hiring are politically motivated and ethnically biased. A lot of talent is being wasted of the youth and they seek refuge in the activities which does not suit them at all, this starts from drugs, illegal businesses and wastage of precious years of life in other useless activities.
Its about time that we go for a collaborative effort to channelise and focus the energies of our youth by providing them equal opportunities in all fields. Government will play its role and we will play ours by taking a pledge that will not get our own family members recommended for a job for which they are under qualified or not capable enough. A culture and a system has to be created in which a major screening is being done at Universities and colleges of talented young men and women after which they are given an opportunity to land at good jobs after passing through a strict selection criteria in the forms of written exams and their performance in academics and also their natural in-built abilities. We have divided education system based on class culture, the big shots kids study in expensive schools and Universities and even go abroad for studies where as the middle class and lower middle class families could only send their kids to government schools and universities or to less expensive private schools and universities. Further discrimination is seen when Job advertisements suggest that only graduates of a certain educational institute can apply for the said jobs.

If the youth turns to do own business, over all economic situation will not help their cause. Secondly for an ordinary man its difficult to get even a loan from a bank to get much needed initial financial support to run a small business. Again the loans are given to people in Pakistan who dont really need those as they are already well to do. The scholarship ships for students are very rare, the ones that exist, hardly provide it to the needy and deserving people.

The special struggle has been observed in the middle class educated females, who had to rely on their parents and other relatives for job references and despite having excellent educational track record, they end up doing ordinary low package jobs. The presence of females in the corporate job sector and middle management category has seen an upward trend but its still low as compared to the number of qualified women. The scope for jobs is limited for them in banking, customer care and sales in Telecom, Health sector, Education and textiles. A alot has been said and promised by our leaders but nothing substantial has been done to over come the problem of not having appropriate jobs for them.
Either males or females the fact remains that our youth has been neglected thoroughly by us and by our leaders and now its payback time. We could only pay them back by making a system for them in which their talents can be utilized and not mis-used. Other wise we would end up having a totally frustrated youth who dont even see a bright future in USA and Europe cause of clear cut biases against Muslims 9/11 so called War on terror after which Pakistani students and other Pakistan citizens or even people having nationality abroad doing jobs are thoroughly harassed on the name of National security. We have seen a lot of students de-ported from foreign countries on security grounds and this resulted in majority of the students to suffer who were only there to study hard and get back to Pakistan to pursue their bright careers.

Media has to play its vital role our core issues these days are education, health, joblessness, poverty and National security, we are least concerned whether actress Meera is married or not, whether Musharaf  is hanged or left alone, whether President stays in power or not, what are the new trends in high street fashion market, what are the new innovations in technology and so on. We as a Pakistani Nation want our basic rights and right of having equal opportunities is one of the important issues.

Ameer Ismail Jamil