DEVELOPEMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES

• Muhammad Rasheed
• Asif Maqbool
• Naeem Qasim

Population is generally dubbed as ‘the wealth of poor’. The notion is true partly because population is considered as burden, but it is full of potential to change the whole scenario provided it is utilized in an effective way. Investment for human capital formation must be made mandatory for developing world if they are to find an escape from the whirlpool of deprivation and degradation into which they are sucked. 

Human resources forming an important component of national wealth. Human capital implies resources developed in health care environment through general and specialized education relating to any discipline, contributing to socio-economic development of individual and country as a whole.  Greater the percentage of human capital, faster will be the economic growth rate and greatest socio-economic well being of the people.

Unfortunately in almost all the developing countries including Pakistan, due to income inequalities, the component of raw labor dominates in their total human wealth. Despite economic turn around in recent years, efforts directed towards halting growing poverty totally failed and the human development gap has become widely negative. Resultantly, raw labor continues to pervade the country’s human resources and this constant link between income inequalities and low pace of human development has become a vicious circle.

Human resource development is the progression of making and shaping an ordinary person into productive resource particularly in rural areas so as to mitigate poverty via accelerating agricultural growth. It encompasses aspects of awareness raising, education and training, attitude change, confidence building, participation in decision making and action. It’s most important goal is to maximize people’s hidden potential to contribute to development by participating fully in all productive activities. However, for some educators and development planners Human Resource Development is an end in itself and its goal should be realizing human potential and developing individual self-reliance.

Pakistan is a poor agricultural country having a population of 150 Million, facing a huge burden of foreign and domestic debt. Its real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate is 6.6 percent per annum and there is need to increase economic growth in order to overcome the problem of poverty. So there is a great need of human resource development in agriculture sector because this is a major contributing sector. The broader classification of the sustainable development of human resources includes; provision of education (general as well as technical) with quality at all levels and health.

Education is an essential tool for developing human resources and a necessary ingredient for sustainable socio-economic growth. Investment in education contributes to the accumulation of human capital, which is essential for higher income and sustained economic growth. It was concluded in a study that a farmer with a minimum of four years of education was able to increase his production by an average of 8.7 percent.  Illiteracy is a major obstacle to development in general and rural areas in particular. The continuously increasing commercialization of agriculture has made it a job of highly skilled and educated person having the ability to envisage and can take right decisions at right time and is technically equipped to handle agriculture business on scientific basis.

With the emergence of the world trade organization (WTO), Pakistan can compete in free trade only with the dynamic changes in agriculture sector. So, there is a dire need to train the manpower especially in agriculture sector according to the requirement.  According to Asian Development Bank (1990), on job training in India raised the labor productivity by 7 percent.  In Pakistan with vocational training, workers in industrial sector in 1986 were found to be three times more productive than their counter-parts in agriculture sector with less or no education.

Health is vital too for the proper grooming of an individual, but is not ensured in our case especially if we look towards rural areas. A healthy man will be capable of being trained according to the requirement. A recent survey has reflected that the bread winners in the poor families on the average lose 80 to 90 working days in a year because of illness. This means not only a 20 percent reduction in families meager income, but additional expenditure on treatment, often require sale of an animal or other assets the family may have. But in terms of health facilities provision to the general public we are much lacking behind the requirement as total number of hospitals, dispensaries, rural health center and basic health units in Pakistan are far less then needed. Health provision in terms of number of doctors per person is still too low.

Social development and absolute poverty are affected by a number of likely factors like economic growths, level of income, access to multiple components of social services like health, education, family planning, nutrition, water and sanitation. Nothing can be achieved without educational provision at all levels and ensuring proper health facilities. And these are basically the inducer towards greater efficiently and productivity. Without maintaining a good health status and education, we cannot even maintain the existing status of economic activities.