Amid global outbreak of coronavirus pandemic, Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development (HRD) revealed that Pakistan leapfrogged India and Bangladesh in manpower export in 2020.
The statistics of the Economic Survey of Pakistan show that more than 11 million Pakistanis had traveled abroad for employment in more than 50 countries last year.
Among them, 96% of Pakistanis migrated to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries with Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) taking the lead roles.
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The figures showed that 136,339 people moved to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), 53,676 to the UAE, 10,336 to Oman, and remaining continued to other countries during 2020.
Further, SAPM on Overseas Pakistanis Sayed Zulfiqar Bukhari was also on the same wavelength with the latest figures and pointed at Prime Minister Imran Khan’s promise of creating employment opportunities for more than a million Pakistanis.
For a country direly in need of foreign remittances we created 1.2 million new jobs across the world since coming into government.
Even with global slowdown during #Covid we kept Pakistan in leading spot.
This alone accounts for 12% of PM’s promised jobs. pic.twitter.com/G1NrFmRfEG— Sayed Z Bukhari (@sayedzbukhari) June 14, 2021
The survey concluded that more than 220,000 workers from Pakistan were sent to various countries on different job assignments in 2020.
Bangladesh came on second with 217,699 and India on third with 94,145 workers sent for employment purposes during the coronavirus pandemic.
Pakistanis remained fortunate as Kuwait rescinded the ban on work visas imposed since 2011.
Commenting on an increase in remittances, PM Imran Khan applauded the efforts of overseas Pakistanis for setting a new record of $2.8 billion in April this year.