Islamabad: Pakistan has been facing continuous exodus as nearly a million people left the country for better work opportunities in 2015 alone. Senate Committee on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development was told yesterday that since 1971, over 9 million Pakistanis have emigrated through the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment, according to a report in Express Tribune. This number peaked in 2015 when 9,46,571 Pakistanis moved to other countries, and since 2013, over 2.32 million Pakistanis have left the country for work.
Of them, six per cent proceeded to Gulf Cooperation Council countries, about one per cent moved to the European Union and other developed countries, three per cent to Malaysia, Libya, South Korea etc. The report did not give details of where the rest headed to.
Giving details, Federal Secretary for Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development Khizar Hayat Khan pointed out how Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa made up just 12 per cent of Pakistan’s entire population at home, but it comprises 26 per cent of Pakistanis working abroad. Similarly, as many as 0.5 million people hailing from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are working abroad.
