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Karachi Stories: Educated youths find ‘jobs’ in criminal gangs

By Hasan Mansoor

Nasir is one of many graduates who are involved in street crimes. He faces a case of car hijacking and does not hesitate to say that the number of educated youth involved in organised crimes is bound to increase.

“I am a graduate and left no stone unturned to get a job to support my parents, but I could not get one,” he said.

Nasir was recently arrested along with two of his accomplices during an abortive attempt to snatch mobile phones from a shop in the city. Police investigators say he was part of a gang that was also involved in car hijacking.

“I could not bear an idle life seeing my aging parents working to support me,” an investigator quoted Nasir as saying.

The police are witnessing a phenomenal increase in the number of educated youth in street crime and their number in car hijacking and snatching of mobile phones is the highest. A recent report of the Anti Car-Lifting Cell (ACLC) of the Sindh police reveals that some of the accused arrested in a year are holders of master’s and bachelor’s degrees.

Of around 300 suspects involved in such crimes, six hold master’s degree and 27 of them are graduates. The report said 20 of the youngsters arrested on a charge of being members of car-lifting gangs are intermediate and 35 of them are matriculates. Experts at the Citizen-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), which has been dealing with car hijacking in the city since 1990, has expressed concerns about the increasing trend of educated youth joining criminal gangs and has held joblessness as the main culprit.

“It is nothing but the increasing unemployment and poverty, which is forcing our educated youth to take to crime,” Sharfuddin Memon, the CPLC chief, says. ACLC officials have similar findings to share. “During investigations, we ask these young men what made them to take to crime and they reply that despite getting such degrees they failed to find any jobs to support their families,” says an investigator.

Hundreds of graduates had applied for the post of police constables a couple of years ago. Most of the applications sent by job aspirants were not accepted because some senior police officials did not find it fit to “dump” such educated lot into a mess, a job that requires hardly matriculates.

“Our requirement is matriculation and we decided not to spoil such educated lot by making them constables,” says a police official.

The police hierarchy’s ‘sincerity’, however, failed to bring respite to our educated youth. In fact, asking them to apply for a job in keeping with their degrees is also an injustice being done by our authorities to these youngsters. The fact is that they do not get jobs in keeping with their qualification at government and private establishments.

Young people with fresh degrees from universities and other educational institutions are in the market waiting endlessly for jobs, but they find no job. The prevailing economic stagnation is one important cause of rising unemployment.

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