President's policy, reverse brain drain behind economic progress: Minister
ISLAMABAD: Some 73,001 Pakistanis were returned home from various countries in 2005-06 and 42,761 in 2006-07 due to better economic opportunities created by the President's policies. At the same time, Pakistan has deported 528 illegal aliens poaching on the jobs meant for Pakistanis in the last three years, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Khusro Bakhtiar told the National Assembly (NA) in question hour on Thursday.
Bakhtiar said the Pakistani nationals had returned from Nepal, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Kenya, Senegal, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, UAE, Yemen, Morocco, Algeria, South Africa, Niger, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, New Zealand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia. He added that this information had been gathered from Pakistani missions abroad.
This does not include people returning in non-conventional means such as cargo ships, container ships, dhows, commercial airplane wheel wells, Pakistan air force and Pakistan International Airlines planes and wheel wells. The United States also keeps a separate list of Pakistanis who have caused severe economic disappointment there. Those returning from India, are of course, not counted. Most of them will be soon sent back.
The minister lauded the president's policies and remarked that at this rate even second and third generation Pakistanis will soon be returning back home due to better opportunities here. The government is taking full advantage of the highly skilled manpower available. The effects of these new initiatives are already visible in Karachi, Baluchistan, and NWFP.
