Beggars are leaving Pakistan en masse, often travelling by boatloads, and then exploiting Umrah and visit visas to beg from pilgrims abroad
More beggars than workers from Pakistan throng the Middle East, the largest concentration of Pakistanis abroad that also sustains its remittances inflow, the country’s Senate debated this week. A staggering 90 per cent of “professional beggars” arrested in Middle Eastern nations hail from Pakistan, causing concern and suspicion. They are involved in petty crimes such as pickpocketing around the revered Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia.
“The issue of gangs of professional beggars, once notorious on the streets and squares of Pakistan, has now crossed international borders and become a growing concern in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and beyond,” The Express Tribune reported.
“Beggars are leaving Pakistan en masse, often travelling by boatloads, and then exploiting Umrah and visit visas to beg from pilgrims abroad,” Secretary, Overseas Pakistanis Zulfikar Haider revealed. He went on to express his deep concern that prisons in Iraq and Saudi Arabia are now housing a significant number of Pakistani beggars, further tarnishing the image of Pakistanis abroad.”
One of the most alarming aspects of this phenomenon is the erosion of trust in overseas Pakistanis. Haider lamented that Pakistanis are increasingly viewed with suspicion abroad, leading to a rising number of deportations. “Iraq and Saudi Arabia continuously complain that we are sending criminals to their countries, and their jails are overcrowded with Pakistani beggars. This is a serious issue of human trafficking,” he said.
Writing in Dunya Daily, Mohammed Izhar ul Haq reports on a British Government survey that reveals that the least educated young people in the UK are from Pakistan. This survey covered youths between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four. Unemployed youth are also mostly of Pakistani origin, more than the numbers of Bangladeshis, British whites, blacks, and others combined.
The survey also shows that among the youth deprived of education, training, and employment, the lowest number is of youth of Chinese origin and Indian origin. “In other words, the youth from China and India are at the forefront of benefiting from education, training, and employment,” Haq writes.
Regular branches of Pakistan’s political parties are established in most cities abroad! The majority of Pakistanis (not all) are not getting out of the nomadic mind-set even after living in foreign countries. Back home, Pakistan has a staggering 22.8 million out-of-school children — “a statistic that has significantly shaped the country’s education reform agenda over the past decade. However, most people remain unaware of another sobering fact — nearly four out of five children under the age of 10 in Pakistan struggle to read simple text. This means that even children who do attend primary school regularly are not acquiring the reading skills expected for their age,” a study in Dawn newspaper said.
A report in Jang newspaper says that in Pakistan, 48 per cent of women are illiterate, 79 per cent are not part of the workforce and only 10 per cent of the total female population can make decisions about their own health, Dr. Ali Mir said in a meeting that Global Gender Gap Index 2022.
Pakistan is at the bottom of the ranking, which means that the rate of gender equality in Pakistan is very low. Gender inequality in Pakistan is even deeper because only 21 per cent of women are part of the labour force in the country, while in the National Assembly, the percentage of women members in seats is also low.