Govt fails to send interns, skilled workforce to Japan in one year

ISLAMABAD: The government has so far failed to send even a single technical intern or skilled worker to Japan during the last one year though both the countries had signed the Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) to this effect in February 2019.

Japan had announced to hire skilled workforce of 345,000 from all over the globe in 14 fields and so far Tokyo had signed MoC with 11 countries including Pakistan.

At a time when unemployment is considered one of the major concerns, the government remained unable to avail this opportunity while Japan was willing to ensure transfer of technology to intern, skilled and highly skilled workforce under the stabilization program sponsored by the IMF.

The Ministry of Human Resource under the leadership of Zulfi Bukhari has so far failed to materialize this opportunity for sending the Pakistani workforce to Japan.

“We signed MoC in February 2019 for hiring interns through two government departments of Pakistani government but so far not a single intern or skilled worker was dispatched to Japan,” Deputy Chief Mission (DCM) of Japanese Embassy Shindo Yusuke and Head of Public Affairs Iwasaki Ryuji stated in a joint press briefing here this week.

Keeping in view the outbreak of Coronovirus in Pakistan, the Japanese Embassy officials invited only a few journalists and requested them to file stories on Thursday because they wanted to brief journalists in different batches to avoid big gathering at one place. They briefed the first batch of journalist last Tuesday.

The Japanese officials said that around 10,000 workforce from Pakistan was currently working in Japan and Japan was ready to accept more workforce. “So far out of required skilled workforce of 347,000, Japan has hired around 2,000 skilled workers from different parts of the world,” they added.

They said that there was no Pakistan specific quota but the government could maximize the numbers of Pakistanis to avail this opportunity.

The governments of Japan and Pakistan had signed the MoC in February 2019. The purpose of this program was to transfer technical skills, techniques and knowledge to foreign countries, including Pakistan, through an experience of On the Job Training (OJT) in Japan.

The Pakistani government, he said, had designated only two government owned organizations namely NAVTTC and NUTECH but so far no technical intern was dispatched to Japan.

“We are very much hopeful that Pakistan will send good and talented interns to Japan and Japanese companies are also interested in hiring Pakistani interns,” he said.

He said that the response from the Pakistani side is little bit frustrating. He said that other countries of the world had designated hundreds of agencies to send their internees to Japan while Pakistan had designated only two. “I am curious why they have designated only two organizations,” Shindo Yusuke replied to a query, adding that Pakistan can designate other local organizations for sending the internees to Japan.

He said that Japan requires a lot manpower and under this category, roughly 345000 skilled workers from around the world will be allowed to go to Japan. He said that “we haven’t seen any concrete proposal from Pakistan in this regard."

Talking about the third group related other category which includes professions requiring higher expertise, technique or other element, he said this category has variety of fields, including engineers/specialists in humanitarian and international services. A lot of people in Japan don’t know about Pakistan, he said. “Pakistan needs to do active marketing to sell Pakistan there,” he concluded.