Daily Times

World Population Day, established in 1989 by the UN governing council, is just around the corner–July 11, 2023. This day comes and passes without having any credible impact on our state policy. How to control the explosive population growth is not the question for the lower segment of society, which believes in “more the merrier,” but for the government. Our governments usually run on a day-to-day basis and hardly care about such a serious matter, which needs long-term planning for the future.

Whenever there’s news of boat carrying labour sinking in high waters, one imagines that the maximum number among them would be Pakistanis. And, it turns out true. On hearing or reading such harrowing news, one’s heart sinks at the thought of our men losing their precious lives while escaping in boats to make it to prosperous countries for jobs. I think of their parents, young wives and children if married, for whom they undertook such hazardous journeys by paying millions to the organised mafia of human smugglers. Of course, the government staff responsible to check human smuggling are in the know of it and they’re most likely partners in the sordid affair.

The research and policy NGO, Guttmacher Institute, calculated there are about 3.5 million unplanned pregnancies in Pakistan every year because of a lack of knowledge and contraceptives to prevent unplanned births. According to this NGO’s estimate, Pakistan’s population will hit 3000 million by 2050. I might have quoted the comparative figure about New Zealand elsewhere but forgive me for mentioning it again. New Zealand’s total population has remained about five million in the last six years while we swell by 5.28 million every year. The island country stands in sixth position in the world in patient care infrastructure. It would be interesting to compare it with our judicial system which stands at 134th position among 140 such systems in other countries. Our country usually leads from the bottom. So sad. Who is responsible for the overall degradation in almost all government administrative sectors of the country? But what affects the majority of the population the most are insufficient medical facilities provided by the government and that infamous Single National Curriculum. The SNC introduced by former PM Imran Niazi is ostensibly to bring the students of the curriculum on an equal platform without any discrimination and a sense of superiority. Niazi himself studied at Aitchison College and later at Oxford University. What a dichotomy! On a lighter side, other than his spoken English, Imran Niazi too seems to have gone through the SNC. Recall his pear of knowledge about Japan and Germany sharing common boundaries.

There are about 3.5 million unplanned pregnancies in Pakistan every year because of a lack of knowledge and contraceptives.

It seems that controlling the population is never on the priority agenda of any government. To produce a skilled labour force the government must establish vocational and technical training centres in all districts. Backward districts and divisions like Dera Ghazi Khan should have many such institutes to train young men in different skills to manage good jobs abroad. MNA Amjad Farooq Khosa from DGK berates the overstaffed schools and colleges in the district, with high-sounding appointments for the teachers and professors but imparting substandard education. Amjad Khosa is a well-read man with a huge personal library. Someone like him should be made responsible to oversee education in the DGK division.

Recently, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto met with his counterpart in Tokyo. Besides agreeing to cooperate in different fields of development in Pakistan, the two FMs agreed to teach the Japanese language to send skilled individuals to Japan. This would be a great leap forward if Pakistan could set up Japanese language centres. This is nothing new. My daughter teaches Elecose classes in Australia. The majority of students in her class are Chinese and eager to learn the English language. Comparatively, many of our double MA types from Punjab University cannot even clear ILETs – an elementary English test is another matter.

Crowds of unskilled men in their late twenties and early thirties are a liability for the nation. Were they to be trained in various skills in vocational institutes, they would be an asset for the country and not a liability. They could earn a respectable livelihood in foreign countries and remit forex back home to feed their families and the same could count toward the national forex reserves.

It’s our national predicament that the political leadership fails to plan but wakes up when faced with the results of ignorance and ill-planning. Overlooking the population explosion is no less than criminal negligence on the part of concerned authorities. When the result of this serious oversight appears, it’s too late to manage the swarming hundreds of millions of unskilled and semi-literate crowds.

The writer is a Lahore-based columnist and can be reached at pinecity @gmail.com