Demographically the largest province of Pakistan, Baluchistan has the highest unemployment rate in Pakistan. About 9.13 percent of people are unemployed in Baluchistan. This is all because of corruption, discrimination, lack of education, poverty, educational institution, etc. Baluchistan is by far the largest in size and the smallest in population. Despite such a low population, here people are unemployed. These two situations in Baluchistan are something that more than half of the young generation here does not know what they are going to do. In Balochistan students get their parents’ choice of degree and lose their interest in studies. The society’s pressure, most of their students either select the medical field or engineering. Hence, under this pressure, often people opt for civil services as well. Irrefutable evidence of this fact can be found in the data given by CSS-2020 Annual report, according to which registered candidates for CSS from Balochistan were 824, out of which only five qualified, making it a 0.6 percent pass rate. There is no value for any other field. The rest of the fields are often discouraged, either by the elders. In our society, parents only prefer these two fields. Due to which the students are mostly attracted to the same field and the number of students are large and there are less vacancies available and which is also one of the main reasons for unemployment. Career counseling is very important for the student at the beginning of their journey. Baluchistan’s youth often switch their career paths at a very late stage, predominantly switching from pursuing on MBBS degree to joining the civil service. There is a lack of awareness and knowledge in this region due to which most of the students failed to express their interest and eventually left with one option. Due to this, the students show no motivation or lack of interest which affects their performance. Therefore, students must be given a platform to understand their areas of interest and align them with their career paths. The main reason for unemployment is a lack of awareness, poverty and a poor education system. According to a report, each year nearly 25,000 people graduate from Baluchistan. Unfortunately, hardly around 2,000 of them can secure jobs.
Government jobs are the only source of employment in the province. Government jobs were easy to get in the past because of the smaller population. But the increase in population is making matters worse.
Private sector jobs only can decrease the number of unemployment But unfortunately, there are almost no private jobs in the province. The Federal Government has failed to create job opportunities in Balochistan. There are Ph.D. holders who are working in the private sector to earn their livelihood. This shows us the weakness of the government in Baluchistan. My solution for youth unemployment is that I aim to provide work opportunities for the youth while they are studying, so they can gain valuable industry-level skills that propel them into the industry as well as give them more insight they can bring back into their classroom for their peers. My platform will aim to provide small employment opportunities such as internships or entry level jobs that require minimal skills to the youth. For this, I will collaborate with universities and companies in multiple industries so that students can get a chance to experience work life in multiple roles. This collaboration will be based on a promise that every 4 months, the company has to take a fixed number of students from the company into their trainee/internship programs and teach them some basic industry level skills.
The company will also partner with the university to provide them with a list of skills from their specific industry that they believe graduates should possess. The university is then responsible for creating a curriculum that incorporates those skills and the rest of the skills will be taught to the student as they start to work for the company. This collaboration can be fruitful to provide a sustained pool of workers to the industry each year that possess the skill and the ability to take on jobs. Target audience:
This platform will be targeting young adults between ages 16–28 who prefer being independent but no such opportunities are being offered in Pakistan where a young person can earn before they graduate. The idea is to introduce a setup that would give job seekers i.e. the young adults a platform to connect with the employees and will offer part-time employment opportunities. I believe that there is a large pool of talent in Pakistan comprising of young people that just needs to be given the chance to show their potential. With such a platform, we aim to bring this opportunity to them, as well as change the way that the economic system works, and make education a ladder on the way to a meaningful career, not a barrier towards a good job.