LAHORE , July 15, 2023: The young and educated people are moving abroad to improve their future. The number of talented people settling abroad are rising with every passing day.
In the first six months of ongoing year (January – June) 15,000 engineers, 1500 doctors and 1400 IT professionals had left the country for the sake of better future – in total, almost 395,000 moved out of the country in the first six months.
In 2020 almost 225,000 moved out of the country, in 2021, 288,000 moved abroad and in 2022 the numbers skyrocketed with almost 832,000 moving out of the country.
In terms of provinces, most who went out of the country belonged to Punjab with almost 223,000 then KP with 116,000 followed by Sindh with 30,946, Azad Kashmir with 15,100 and Balochistan with 4,000.
If looking at cities comparison, most people moved out from Sialkot (16,988), Dera Ghazi Khan (16,814), Lahore (15, 504), Gujranwala (14,530), Faisalabad (13,100), Karachi (12,950), Swat (12, 039) and Islamabad (4,513).
Most people who left the country moved to Gulf nations – Most went to Saudi Arabia (186,000), then UAE (100,676) followed by Qatar (32,600), Oman(29,405) and Bahrain (6,322).
Almost 4,920 people moved to Britian, 2,525 to Greece, 1,100 to South Korea but only 499 moved to United States.
What is surprising is that remittances are decreasing as people are moving abroad. In the financial year 2022-23, almost remittances of $27.2 billion was recorded – $4.2 billion less than fiscal year 2021-22.
In terms of professions of people who moved abroad, most are labourers (169,000), drivers (85,000), managers (19,499), salesmen (12,0000, technicians (12, 649), mechanics (5,000) and electricians (8,547).
In terms of skilled professionals, most are engineers (4,015, then accountants (2,011) and then doctors (1,583).
Almost 10.28 million Pakistanis have settled abroad since 1971 – most (946,571) moved out in 2015.