About 8,000 recently returned Afghans have rushed to apply for one of 1,800 chances to work in Qatar after the wealthy Gulf state expanded a deal with Kabul, Afghanistan’s labour ministry told AFP on Thursday.
More than four million Afghans have been deported or pressured to leave Iran and Pakistan since September 2023, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration.
Afghanistan is facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, the United Nations says. Afghans forced to leave neighbouring countries have returned to high unemployment rates and a fragile economy struggling to recover from four decades of conflict.
Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs spokesman Samiullah Ibrahimi said the 8,000 applications had been received since Wednesday.
He said the positions were “specifically for those who returned or were forced to leave Iran and Pakistan” in the past two years.
The jobs ranged from management roles to engineering, hospitality and work as mechanics.
They are an expansion of a deal announced in July to open 3,100 jobs for Afghans in Qatar, for which 15,500 applied in the hope of gaining work outside the country.
Registration was open in Kabul, Herat, Kandahar and Nangarhar provinces, home to most of the country’s major cities.
Hopeful applicants had to provide proof they had returned to Afghanistan in the past two years, Ibrahimi said, and had to pay 100 Afghanis ($1.45) to register.
Between 1.5 and 2.1 million Afghans came back this year alone, according to UN agencies, which warned the influx would exacerbate the country’s endemic poverty.
Afghanistan’s unemployment rate of more than 13 percent affects nearly a quarter of young people aged 15 to 29, according to the World Bank.
Those who do have work often support large, extended families on stretched salaries, with many Afghans relying on money sent from relatives abroad.
qb-sw/pbt
© Agence France-Presse
