The study available with Business Recorder explored the different initiatives of CPEC namely; Energy, Infrastructure, Gwadar and Industrial Cooperation and the related projects. Around 42 major projects have been agreed under CPEC out of which 22 projects are in progress on the fast track whereas ten of these are already completed and it indicated and analyzed the employment under the projects which are completed or commenced.
The projection of jobs in infrastructure sector indicated that total investment in KKH Phase (Thakot-Havelian section) in KP created 7,800 direct jobs on this project out of which almost 6000 are given to Pakistani nationals and the remaining 1800 have gone to Chinese. Presently, Peshawar-Karachi motorway (Lahore-Multan section) has created a total of 17,246 jobs and is estimated to be increased. Out of the total number of 17,246 jobs, 16676 workers possess Pakistan's nationality and apart from these 96% workforce, remaining 570 workers belong to China.
Currently, among 51,580-strong labour force being used in projects relating to infrastructure of roads, only 3,780 are Chinese while rest of 47,800 are Pakistanis.
In railway infrastructure sector, an estimated 8 labours per kilometre are required for successfully running the system that means around 12,000 labours for 1500 km under these projects. The categories of skilled labour required for these projects include Signal Support Staff, Electrical Engineers, Project Managers, Communication Engineers, Electricians and Civil/ Construction Engineers. In energy sector, study took Sahiwal coal power project as a test case which is one of the first projects to be completed ahead of time, and it is running successfully in its operational phase. Keeping Sahiwal power plant as a benchmark for the upcoming projects, the number of employment generated in the construction phase of power generation projects is estimated to be 50,828 in 16 energy projects, while 22900 have been created under 5 energy projects which include coal as well as hydro projects, making a total 73,728 jobs via power generation projects, the study indicated.
In Gwadar, various projects under CPEC are estimated to create at least 0.1 million construction related labour force s besides the high qualified jobs at Gwadar Sea Port, Air Port and economic zone. The Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are designed to use 70% of their area for industrial zones and the remaining 30% is allocated for the housing and employees' facilitation.
In aggregate, the area for 9 SEZs, proposed under CPEC is 9,400 acres. Out of which, around 4,500 acres of land is allotted for the Special Economic Zone of Faisalabad, which is expected to generate 0.6 million jobs. This leads to an estimate of 158 labour intensive jobs per acre of an industrial area under CPEC, study showed.