Pakistan's brain drain: 7,60,000 educated youth move overseas in 2022, nearly triple the departures in 2021

Islamabad: Pakistan’s brain drain situation has aggravated with more than 7,60,000 educated youth seeking employment overseas this year mainly because of the uncertain economic and political situation in the country, according to a media report on Tuesday. According to documents available with The Express Tribune, 7,65,000 people left Pakistan in 2022, nearly triple the 2,25,000 departures in 2021 and 2,88,000 in 2020. This year’s data also includes 92,000 highly-educated people such as doctors, engineers, information technology experts and accountants leaving the nation. According to the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment, an overwhelming majority of the emigrants went to Middle Eastern countries, mainly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Among the European destinations, the preferred choice of Pakistanis appears to be Romania. The effects of the deteriorating economic situation, as well as the political uncertainty, have begun to affect the workforce of Pakistan, a bureau official told the newspaper on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media. Hundreds of thousands of young men, including the highly educated, who are worried about inflation, unemployment and uncertain economic and political situation, are going abroad every year in search of employment, he added. Cash-strapped Pakistan is also facing a political crisis with ousted prime minister Imran Khan demanding that the government announce early general elections and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif rejecting his plea for snap polls. According to the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment, 7,65,000 young people from Pakistan went abroad this year. It also said that the number of emigrants had risen after registering a fall in two consecutive years following 6,25,000 emigrations in 2019. According to the documents, those who left the country in 2022 included more than 92,000 graduates, 350,000 trained workers and the same number of untrained labourers. They also said that 7,36,000 people went to the Gulf states. The emigrants included 5,534 engineers, 18,000 associate electrical engineers, 2,500 doctors, 2,000 computer experts, 6,500 accountants, 2,600 agricultural experts, over 900 teachers, 12,000 computer operators, 1,600 nurses and 21,517 technicians. The group of unskilled workers comprised 2,13,000 drivers. According to the data, over 7,30,000 youth went to the Gulf states, and nearly 40,000 went to European and other Asian countries. The country-wise breakdown of the data showed 4,70,000 Pakistanis headed to Saudi Arabia for employment, 1,19,000 to the UAE, 77,000 to Oman, 51,634 to Qatar and 2,000 to Kuwait. The data also mentioned that 2,000 Pakistanis went to Iraq, 5,000 to Malaysia, 602 to China, 815 to Japan, and 136 to Turkey. Besides, 478 Pakistanis went to Sudan in Africa in search of employment. The highest number of people emigrating to a European country was 3,160 youth going to Romania. It was followed by 2,500 to Great Britain, 677 to Spain, 566 to Germany, 497 to Greece, and 292 to Italy. The Bureau of Emigrants also registered 700 people going to the United States. More than half of those leaving Pakistan were from Punjab. The documents said 4,24,000 emigrants this year were from Punjab, 2,06,000 from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 38,000 from newly-merged tribal districts, 54,000 from Sindh, 27,000 from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, 7,000 from Balochistan and 6,000 from Islamabad. Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.