“If I am unable to pursue the desired or any job that could feed me and my family, I am perhaps as good as a goner” said Majid, during a conversation about the social welfare jobs announced in the middle of a pandemic that befell as a curse over the middle-class families and young unemployed youths of Turbat, Balochistan.
This intense sense of guilt and troublesome thought from a youth of 30 years was a barrier to overcome which is the story of many others in the same province as well.
When glancing through the charts of poverty lines in Pakistan, the Baochistan’s estimated figure of poverty from 1998-1999 was shown as 55.9% among the four units.
This information kept on retreating until the hit of COVID19 in the late 2019 when the clutches were so hard for a developing province (overall 71% remains multidimensional poor). The residents of the province were harshly crushed. Poverty rate at the beginning of 2019 was under 40.7 percent that specified to be the poorest province of the country.
From an article published in (November 11, 2019) the percent of the surges of unemployment rate of Baluchistan was to be 4.13 exceeding all the other provinces. Thus, the pandemic led to massive changes that gigantically exceeded.
There are however no exact estimates for the current years, but the assumptions according the labor force chart is to be 5% by the end of 2021 wrapping it up to be worse than it was before.
This, on its own is quite a hurdle for the middle classes and the limited assets that they inherit. Be it both the genders, the total percentage of the province on large scale has affected the complete poor sects, worsening their ways of lives.
The quotas of the jobs too have decreased after the attack of the deadly virus.
Though, based on the prior graphs and poverty lines, the COVID19 has overall affected the country’s situation, making the circumstances for the labor force even worse.
The province suffers from unemployment, poverty and a pandemic bestowed upon all at once which carries the suffering even more than it had ever been.
