Romania will be giving 500,000 work visas to Pakistan. Talking with Mr. Zulfiqar Bukhari (special Assistant to Prime Minister on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development) on Wednesday, 17th March 2019, the Romanian ambassador in Islamabad Mr. Nicolae Goia said that they want to recruit 500,000 skilled and semi skilled workers from Pakistan. Since the Romania is a victim of brain draining due to its most of the young educated people preferring other western EU countries over Romania due to high wages rates, there is an increasing gap of workers in local labor market.
Mr. Goia further said they are in urgent need of workers in the fields of Medicine, Engineering, High duty drivers, Nurses, IT specialists and other skilled labor etc.
Pakistan is already working under the leadership of Zulfiqar Bukhari on exporting manpower to Germany too by 2020 which has already decided the need of 3 million workers in upcoming years.
⇒Read also German work visa policy
The Romanian ambassador further added that Pakistan must make sure to get benefit of this big opportunity.
Zulfi Bukhari has already done the matters with Qatar to export 100,000 manpower in near future.
Romania on urgent basis needs drivers (heavy-duty and truck drivers). Most of their professional drivers have moved to Germany, Switzerland and Norway so this creates the gap in the labor market and the number or required drivers has reached to 40,000 in recent times.
Zulfikar Bukhari recommended that Romania can get benefit of returned Pakistani drivers from Gulf countries. They have excellence and experience of working in tough environment could be an asset for labor market.
Romanian embassy in Islamabad charges almost 150 USD for the normal work visa. There are no agents involved in this new visa policy.
In Romania, skilled and semi skilled workers are regulated properly. Skilled workers must have good professional experience to work in Romania. Some highly skilled professions such as Doctors, Nurses and Engineers may need to get themselves first regulated from related Romanian authorities (so-called academic qualification recognition).
Pakistani government will now work on this new policy that how to train and recruit labor force legally to Romania. Further steps will be announced in the near future.
The news has also been captured by ARY and The News media group.