By GEOFFREY BEW

BAHRAINIS have nothing to fear about the continuing influx of migrant workers to the country, a leading Pakistani researcher said yesterday.

Dr Ijaz Shafi Gilani, who served as an adviser to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from 1991 to 1993, said the perception that expatriates were a threat to national culture and job security was mistaken.

“It is a natural thing that you feel you may be overtaken,” he told the GDN.

“My view is that it is not a threat, but an opportunity.

“For the sustainability of the growth of the Gulf it has to look outward.

“The successful economies of the future are more likely to resemble the Gulf labour structure than the labour structure of other countries.

“I think people are coming round to that idea and Dubai has taken the lead and Doha is following and perhaps Bahrain is also on that course.”

Dr Gilani, the founder of Gallup Pakistan, which is part of a larger international group that specialises in market research, was speaking at a lecture at the Bahrain Centre for Studies and Research.

The Islamabad-based official had been invited to discuss the Pakistani labour force in the Gulf.

More than 30 people attended the event, including academics, businessmen, media representatives and Pakistani embassy officials.

Dr Gilani said more than 200,000 Pakistanis migrate to the Gulf every year to work, with a population of around two million Pakistanis now in the region.

He said more than 10 per cent of those are professional and highly-trained manpower, while the rest were both skilled and unskilled.

Dr Gilani says as the stability and security of Pakistan increases, less migrants will come to work in the Gulf.

But the academic also believes those who do venture abroad will be those employed in high-tech industries and at managerial levels and will play an increasingly important role in Bahrain’s development. “But obviously the Bahrain population will own these businesses and be the centrepiece and these days big multinational companies are made up of hundreds of different kinds of people,” Dr Gilani said.