The center was established mainly to ensure the welfare and protection of the migrant workers through providing them accurate and timely information on safe and legal migration. Talking to APP, Co-ordinator MRC Shahid Naveed said the center had arranged a number of activities including conferences and training for the intending migrants and also conducted successful media campaigns to aware migrants about safe and legal migration.
He said the MRC would establish 10 offices in Punjab, two in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and one in Sindh, keeping in view the requirements. Naveed informed that over 9 million Pakistanis had proceeded abroad for employment since the year 1971 till to date and most of them proceeded to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The majority was low skilled workers so the lack of information on safe migration, access to support mechanisms and justice add to their vulnerabilities and thus they face exploitation and abuse during recruitment and employment process.
He said the main purpose of the MRC was to provide accurate and timely information on safe and legal migration, referral and counselling, as well as raising awareness on irregular migration and the related serious risks. Co-ordinator MRC said his center would increase the accessibility to general and specific information on migration, provide potential migrants with information and counselling on safe migration, as well as raise awareness on irregular migration and the related serious risks.
Pakistan had a long history of labour migration to the Middle East and was the second largest labour sending country (after India) in South Asia, he said. During the period of 1971-2015, more than 8 million Pakistanis had officially proceeded abroad for employment.
Out of this total labour migration, about 96 percent had proceeded to the six GCC member states - the key destination countries are Saudi Arabia & the UAE. Among all emigrants from Pakistan in the year 2015, 41 percent were skilled, 16 percent semi-skilled and 40 percent un-skilled. Migrant workers bring substantial benefits like remittances in origin countries and human capital in destination countries but unfortunately, the official channels for migration have failed to distribute the benefits equitably among employers, intermediaries and workers, he elaborated.
Copyright Associated Press of Pakistan, 2017