Wednesday 9 December 2009

First session of Overseas Pakistanis Forum: Overseas Pakistanis extend full support to Pakistan's challenges

DUBAI: The first session of Overseas Pakistanis Forum, organised by Pakistan's Ambassador at large Javed Malik and chaired by Federal Minister for overseas Pakistanis Dr Farooq Sattar concluded here on a high note with the overseas Pakistani community expressing their full support to their homeland in these challenging times.

Delegates from UAE and some middle-eastern countries also took part.

"The forum provided a platform for the overseas Pakistanis in the region to directly interact with the decision makers, and therefore we invited the federal minister for overseas Pakistanis to listen to their issues," explained Malik who is leading this effort.

Presidents of all Pakistani associations and business councils in the UAE were represented in the forum and took part in the interaction. The forum started with a presentation by Malik in which he highlighted the issues being faced by overseas Pakistanis. He was critical of the fact that successive governments have wrongly stereotyped the role of overseas Pakistanis only as workers who can simply send remittances. This is not all that they are capable of doing, times have changed and Pakistanis living abroad have acquired positions of affluence and influence, they have gained skills, professional training and resources and many other features in the most influential and rich list of their host countries. All of them are keen to play a role in supporting their country, but there is no framework that allows them to do this. Read more

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