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QUETTA: Pakistan’s impoverished Balochistan province has helped 180 youths secure jobs in ������Ƶ and other Gulf countries in less than a year through a fresh skills development and jobs initiative, the program’s managing director confirmed recently.

The Balochistan Technical Education & Vocational Training Authority (B-TEVTA) is an apex provincial body that regulates, promotes and finances the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector in the province. 

Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province by land yet its most backward by almost all social and economic indicators. The province has been reeling from a low-level insurgency for decades, launched by separatist militants who accuse the center of depriving locals of a share of Balochistan’s mineral resources. Islamabad denies the allegations. 

B-TEVTA launched a jobs program in October 2024 to help skilled, young candidates secure jobs in foreign countries, mainly ������Ƶ. Tariq Javed Mengal, B-TEVTA’s managing director, told Arab News the body received 12,826 applications on its online portal when the foreign jobs initiative was announced last year. Only 6,000 candidates were screened and selected by B-TEVTA for various skills development courses. 

“Presently, we have placed 180 candidates in Gulf countries,” Mengal said on Saturday. “Among [them] 150 are now working in ������Ƶ.” 

Gulf countries such as ������Ƶ and the UAE remain among the top preferred destinations for Pakistan’s labor force, who travel abroad in search of better work opportunities. 

According to Pakistan’s Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment, ������Ƶ remained the leading destination for Pakistani migrant workers in 2025. Around 284,532 Pakistanis registered for employment in the Kingdom during the first seven months of this year.

Mengal, who visited ������Ƶ from Aug. 5-20, was confident that due to the rapid development undertaken under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 program, the Kingdom would emerge as the “leader” of the Middle East. 

“At the moment, there are ample job opportunities in ������Ƶ, and we should be ready to support them with skilled human resources,” Mengal said. “Starting from blue-collar jobs to white-collar jobs.”

‘UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY’

Pakistani workers send billions of dollars in remittances from abroad every year. These remittances serve as a vital lifeline for the cash-strapped country’s economy that frequently relies on the International Monetary Fund’s financial bailouts. 

Pakistan received $3.2 billion in remittances during July, with ������Ƶ remaining the top contributor with $823.7 million.

Muhammad Faris, 29, worked as a laborer since he was a child in Balochistan’s remote Kech district bordering Iran. 

Now, he is preparing to leave for Qatar after getting selected under B-TEVTA’s foreign jobs initiative under the “general labor” category.

Faris says the lack of work opportunities in Balochistan pushed him to apply for B-TEVTA’s program.

“This is a unique opportunity if we take advantage of this initiative,” he told Arab News. “Arab countries have similar religion and culture to ours, the way we dress and eat.

“Thus, the majority of the youth in Balochistan focus on working there,” he added. 

Muhammad Haroon, 25, is another youth from Balochistan’s Chaman town bordering Afghanistan, secured a job in a Dubai restaurant.

Haroon, who worked as a water in Chaman and Quetta previously, termed the initiative as “suitable” for middle-class and lower-middle-class youths of Balochistan.

“If we had gone abroad on our own expense, it would have cost us lots of money,” Haroon told Arab News. 

He said the B-TEVTA training program proved useful in teaching the trainees the basics of the Arabic language.

“We were also taught how to introduce ourselves in Arabic, how to count,” Haroon said. “We were thoroughly guided on everything, including how to maintain conduct with people there.”

Mengal said Saudi companies were interested in hiring Pakistani skilled workers, especially those from Balochistan. He said some of the candidates selected through B-TEVTA’s program had secured jobs in the hospitality sector, while others secured employment in Aramco’s subsidiary companies. 

“Now, we are entering the second phase of this program,” Mengal said. “And we want the maximum number of youth to participate in this initiative.”

Mengal said the second phase of the program would involve the provincial government finding jobs in the US, UK, Japan and Korea for the youth of Balochistan. He said B-TEVTA has received proposals from different firms based in these countries, who are looking for skilled laborers from Pakistan. 

KARACHI: The president of a leading farmers association this week estimated that losses from devastating floods in Pakistan’s breadbasket province of Punjab may have already caused losses in billions of rupees for farmers, while financial analysts feared the impending shortage of agricultural commodities could lead to inflation and impact exports. 

Heavy monsoon rains and excess water released by Indian dams have caused catastrophic floods in Punjab since last week. According to the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), at least 41 people have been killed by the deluges in the last 10 days while over two million have been affected by the floods. 

The destruction brought about the heavy rains have raised the death toll from floods and heavy rains this monsoon season to 863, as per the National Disaster Management Authority’s (NDMA) latest situation report. Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province has reported the highest deaths since Jun. 26, 484, while Punjab has reported 216 deaths, Sindh 58, northern Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) 41, Azad Kashmir 30 and Balochistan 28 deaths. Islamabad has reported eight casualties so far from rain-related incidents. A total of 9,166 houses have been damaged by the floods across the country while 6,180 livestock have perished, according to the NDMA. 

“All the standing crops be it rice, sugarcane, maize, cotton or vegetables have been damaged,” Khalid Mehmood Khokhar, president of the Kissan Ittehad Council (KIC) association, told Arab News on Monday. “For now we can safely say the farmers’ losses must be running in billions (of rupees).”

According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), agriculture constitutes the largest sector of the economy, contributing about 24 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. It also accounts for about half of Pakistan’s employed labor force and is the largest source of foreign exchange earnings. 

Last year, Pakistan’s agriculture sector grew by 0.6 percent. The country had produced 28.4 million tons of wheat in 2024, which was 10 percent less than the preceding year. This year, Pakistan’s food ministry said the government aims to produce 10.2 million bales of cotton, 9.17 million tons of rice, 9.7 million tons of maize and 80.3 million tons of sugarcane.

This target, however, may face a setback, as deluges are expected to move toward the country’s southern regions. Provincial Disaster Management Authority spokesperson Mazhar Chaudhry said 2,300 villages in Punjab alone have been inundated by floods. 

He declined to give more details about potential losses, saying the government would be better placed to give estimates once the floods recede. 

CROP LOSSES, HIGHER IMPORTS AND INFLATION

With floods expected to hit large swathes of crops in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, economists fear the potential damage to major crops and supply chain disruptions may push the cash-strapped government to increase imports.

“The prices of agriculture commodities react positively amidst expectations of shortage,” Shankar Talreja, head of research at the Karachi-based brokerage firm Topline Securities, said. “So we can expect uptick in inflation led by wheat and food prices including fresh vegetables.”

Talreja said inflation could rise to over 4.5 percent in the month of September due to the uptick in prices. He said similar to the cataclysmic floods of 2010, the ongoing floods will damage Pakistan’s standing crops, particularly rice and cotton.

Adnan Sami Sheikh, assistant vice president of research at the Pakistan Kuwait Investment Company, agreed. 

“Loss of crops will likely be met with higher imports, which would impact the balance of payments,” Sheikh said. “Reconstruction efforts would involve higher fiscal spending that would add to government’s borrowing requirements. This would likely push inflation.”

Pakistan is already spending billions in the import of cotton bales. The country produced 7.1 million bales cotton last year against a target of 10.9 million bales, according to the Pakistan Central Cotton Committee data.

KP Finance Minister Muzzammil Aslam estimated the province’s crop losses at 57,892 acres, saying that 5,412 animals had perished in 14 flood-affected districts of the province.

“A comprehensive survey has been initiated to assess damages the calamity has caused,” a document the KP official shared with Arab News said. 

Imdad Hussain Siddiqui, former director of operations at Sindh’s Provincial Disaster Management Authority, said the floods would impact Pakistan’s overall economy, agriculture included. 

“We all know that the inundation also causes salinity and loss of soil fertility, damaging major crops like wheat, rice, cotton, and sugarcane,” he said. 

Siddiqui said this would not only weigh on Pakistan’s exports and GDP growth, but also fuel food insecurity, inflation and unemployment.

Khokhar, meanwhile, rued that the floods had cost farmers “everything.”

“The farmers don’t even have the fodder to feed their livestock,” he said. “Animals too are starving along with humans.”