President urges expatriates to highlight Kashmir issue

President Dr Arif Alvi urged the Overseas Pakistanis to maintain close and strong connections with the people of the areas of their origin, and with their intellect, expertise, experiences, and investments uplift their social, economic and financial outlook.

He said that expatriates should take steps to improve Pakistan's image and highlight the human rights violations in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and the persecution of minorities in India in their host countries. The president expressed these views while talking to a delegation of eminent UK and US-based Pakistani expatriates, at Aiwan-e-Sadr, Press Wing said.

The President termed the Pakistani diaspora around the world a great asset who were contributing with their hard work, knowledge and intellect to the progress and prosperity of their host countries.

He asked the members of the delegation to invest their knowledge, intellect and expertise to create enabling conditions in Pakistan to retain its precious educated and highquality human resources which were direly needed for Pakistan's socioeconomic development. He also expressed his concern over media reports of the brain drain of over 700,000 educated and skilled human resources abroad in the last few months. The president said that although Pakistan was facing difficult economic and financial situations but they were surmountable.

He said that Pakistan was on the right track in empowering women and differently-abled people, providing patronage to orphans, and shifting its focus from curative treatment of diseases, which was expensive and unaffordable, to preventive mode of treatment which would help ensure health at a low cost.

He said that Pakistan had an excellent record of hosting 4 million Afghan refugees for nearly 40 years, mostly out of its own resources, which was an example of hospitality, morality and care for the suffering humanity.

He said that the recent war in Ukraine had brought to light the incidents of discrimination in the treatment of refugees. The refugees from Ukraine were being welcomed by the EU countries whereas the refugees from other parts of the world were expelled and allowed to be drowned in sea, he opined.

The delegation included amongst others Lord Qurban Hussain, Lord Wajid Khan, Imran Hussain, Yasmin Dar, Kamran Hussain, Arshad Rachyal, Raja Najabat Hussain, Majid Nazir, Aaman Majid, Hammas Majid, Tahira Mohammad, Nawab-ud-Din, Syed Ali Kamran Kirmani, Shakoor Ahmed, Naqash Mushtaq Diwan, Sherbaz Munir Choudhary, Mehfooz Ullah, Sharafat Ullah, Sajid Khan, Nadeem Ahmed Khan, Brig ® Iftikhar Ali Khan, Afzal Butt, and the leadership of the Khubaib Foundation.