Foreign labour versus unemployment!

It has been circulated that the ministry of agriculture decided to recruit foreign farmers to work in the country because many local farmers deserted their work and shifted to gold-mining.

The decision comes in a time that the government suffers depletion in the stock of foreign exchange reserves, caused by the foreign labour, and it comes also in a time of increasing in unemployment rates in the country.

The government is facing a dilemma represented in the fact that foreign exchange reserves call for cutting back on foreign labour while the shortage of manpower in the field of agriculture dictates recruitment of foreign manpower!

The imbalance in this equation is, I believe, due to many complicated reasons that cannot be solved unless they are addressed aggregately  because hasty solutions and partial views will not address major crises.

If the work in the field of agriculture had been attractive and useful then the local farmers would not have left it to seek other jobs. So this is an issue that in turn needs to be addressed; because even if we import farmers, they will also find these jobs unfeasible and they will certainly leave them to seek marginal jobs and then they will be part of the problem instead of being a part of solution. 

In fact the policy of employment and labour market calls for reconsideration and revision because as a result of the current pressing economic and political conditions, the country has lost a huge number of trained and skilled cadres and trained labour who either migrated abroad or left their jobs to seek better conditions, the country at the same time faces an internal unemployment at different levels that range from university graduates to untrained labour.

Dealing with such issues requires understanding of its real root-causes in order to be addressed.