Daily Times

President Dr Arif Alvi on Wednesday called upon the oversees Pakistanis to contribute more to the progress and prosperity of the country by sharing their knowledge, experience, intellect and expertise in the relevant fields which was now possible through online platforms without requiring any physically presence.

The president, addressing a ceremony held to recognize the invaluable contributions of the overseas said that Pakistan desperately needed educated, trained, refined and highly productive human resources, which was fundamentally essential element for country’s progress and prosperity. The ceremony was attended by the Chairman of the Welfare Society for Overseas Pakistanis Rights Dawood Ghaznavi, a large number of prominent overseas Pakistanis and others.

President Alvi called upon all stakeholders, government and private sector to take concrete and meaningful steps to create enabling conditions for the retention of productive human resources as the physical resources of a country remained unexploited due to a shortage of trained manpower in the past which adversely impacted the development and progress of the country. He said that he had been making efforts to get voting rights for overseas Pakistanis which could easily be possible with the help of technology or I-voting.

The president said that since the majority of the overseas Pakistanis could not opt for postal ballot due to laws of their host countries or could not physically travel to Pakistan for casting their votes, therefore, a credible, verifiable and technology-based electronic voting system was the best possible solution. He said that the world was making progress by leaps and bound with the help of technology, unfortunately, Pakistan was lagging behind in adopting technology.

He called upon the stakeholders to continue deliberating upon the adoption of technology-based solutions to provide voting rights to overseas Pakistanis. President Alvi said that there was an increasing trend amongst the overseas Pakistanis to resettle in Pakistan with a view to provide their children acceptable social and cultural environment which, he said, was a welcoming trend and should be leveraged to utilize their high-quality learning, knowledge and expertise to bring about marked improvement in the quality of our products and services.

He also called upon the government to take all necessary steps to adjust and employ qualified, educated, knowledgeable and high-quality human resources of Pakistan which was currently needed to catalyze growth and progress in all sectors of the national economy. He further said that the dignity of the people and country would improve proportionally with the uplift of economic and financial outlook, improving the quality and quantity of trained and educated human resources, applying the law in a fair and just manner, creating transparent, verifiable and practical business processes and by bringing more transparency in our business transactions.

He acknowledged the valuable contributions of the overseas Pakistanis towards strengthening the country’s economic and financial outlook by sending their hard-earned sizable remittances to Pakistan. He said that there were around 10 million Pakistanis living abroad and they all were ambassadors of Pakistan.