Introduction:
Youth plays a vital role in the progress and development of a country. If Youth is well-trained, educated and skilled, then they can overcome every obstacle with their positive energy. Pakistan is a country whose 63 percent population is under the age of 25 years. The poverty that prevails in Pakistan doesn’t let the youth to enjoy their childhood. It is estimated that male youth literacy is at 53 per cent whereas for females it is 42 per cent.
Importance of Youth:
A proportional comparison of our youth population and their progress reveals that they are lagging behind in almost every field. Youth is meant to empower the country. The advancement of a country lies on the shoulder of youth. They serve as a backbone of the nation. If backbone of our body fails, our body eventually stops working. Our youth is facing numerous challenges such as minimal self-confidence, hopelessness, and confusions, doubts related to the future, unawareness of the moral issues and a suffering from the identity crisis on a daily basis.
The youth of Pakistan is residing in the culture of terrorism and drugs. They are not satisfied with their living standard. They prefer living abroad. As a result, the economic and social structure of Pakistan deteriorates. Less educated or illiterate, unskilled youth who are poor and couldn’t afford to settle abroad lives here. They have no or minimal civic sense and therefore our outlook suffers a lot.
Major Problems of Our Youth
A significant segment of our youth has been trapped in drugs. Reasons are many like political crises, social crisis and most importantly unfair delivery of rights. Youth, when don’t get the appropriate reward of hard work, are shattered. Unfortunately, our country is suffering from economic, political, social, cultural cataclysm. It is hard to sustain in such a milieu where everything around you is in doubt. Anger, frustration, depression, and restlessness becomes the characteristics of our youth. Let us now discuss the major problems of our youth in detail.
Frustration
The serious problem our youth is facing nowadays is frustration. When we compare the number of graduate students with the jobs available in the market, a bleak picture comes forward. The are no jobs, and those offered in the market do not pay according to their skills and education. The jobs which pay according to their abilities are very less, and for one seat, numerous candidates give their CVs. The biggest irony is this that when students are getting the education, their elders and teachers paint a picture of an excellent future with the luxurious job, house, car, etc. but when these young people come across the bitter reality, their dreams get shattered into pieces. In youth, boys have to face more difficulties because only a small segment of our educated females come out for work. So a large part of our educated girls add nothing to the national wealth and get married. These girls eventually become dependent on boys according to our culture. Boys have to face social pressures as well. They have to go out to earn for their parents, wife, and children.
Gender Competition:
Majority of girls don’t go out to work despite having degrees of top professions as traditionally they prefer to look after their families only. After doing an MBBS, a majority of the female doctors use this degree to find a better marriage proposal and leave the profession after the wedding. Due to this, the public money spent on these female doctors by the government during their education is wasted. Usually, girls who go out to work are even willing to work for lower wages, and again they grab the vacancy of boys who are wishing to get a reasonable salary to support the women, children, and parents at home. Take the example of young doctors who demand a higher salary from the government or otherwise leave the patients to die and come out on roads for protest every other day.
Education
We all know that education is essential for the progress of the country. But unluckily, our country fails to provide quality and education to the youth. Poor youth are deprived of higher education because they can’t afford the fee of colleges and the universities. They hardly complete their studies in school and start working in factories, workshops, etc. Pakistan doesn’t hold the consolidated structure for providing education. Rich people get their education in hi-fi universities and serve in foreign countries while poor and hardworking people are deprived of education and spend their lives in a poor standard of living. Those who get the education are not given proper guidance related to field selection. Selection of good field plays a pivotal role in making a career. Universities have become degree distributing machines instead of education distributing organizations. Children of the wealthy on their own expense and intelligent on international scholarships manage to go abroad to get higher education because they aren’t satisfied with the higher studies in Pakistan. Pakistan eventually loses intelligent people of the country.
Unemployment
Majority of our youth is unemployed. They get the education from good institutions but fail to get good jobs where they can utilize their skills to serve the country. They find themselves no different from other people who were not good in studies but are working in a position parallel to them. They feel humiliated and consider it an act of disgrace. They feel like their whole hard work is wasted. Caught in depression, they use drugs, steal banks and houses, and create lawlessness in society.
Poverty
Another major problem of youth is poverty. They don’t have enough resources to pursue education. Youth with real intelligence but poverty don’t get the education because of lack of resources. Because of poverty and unemployment, parents don’t allow them to go to schools, colleges, and universities. They send them to work. Due to economic challenges, they start earning for their families at a very early age. Child labor in Pakistan is at its peak. You see numerous children begging on the road. The Government is failed to support them to get the education. This child labor has pushed children into dangerous activities like intake of drugs, stealing and many others.
Read Article 2: Youth Bomb in Pakistan
