COVID19 in Gilgit-Baltistan: Who is Hit Hard?

COVID19 in Gilgit-Baltistan: Who is Hit Hard?

Sherbaz Ali Khan

Maybe you are a student, preparing for your exams and thinking to enhance your knowledge and skills in the next level of your school, college or university and sketching the map for your weeks, months and years ahead filled with dreams; though little scared of exams, then came the news that there will not be school, college, or university for indefinite period. Maybe you are an employee of public or private sector organization at some level in the hierarchy, carrying on your duties as usual taking things for granted or were at the point of starting new plans, projects and initiatives in the coming days, and then at once you had to put everything at halt. Maybe you are a service provider or supplier with your services and products ready for your clients and to be clients, and instead of going ahead you had to postpone everything not knowing what to come next.  Maybe you are one of those, who had made good startup plans worked out with arrangement of finance and were about to embark upon the journey to your dream business, and you had to stop as if there were no green signals ahead. Maybe your hotel or shop was running well, and the income you were earning was much in exceeding your operational and overhead costs, and you were waiting for a good business season ahead, but then you had to close whatever business there was with additional thinking of how to pay the costs incurring in the meanwhile. Maybe you were enthusiastic about the reopening of the trade route to restore your trade and so were your partners, but you could not see the opening of the route, instead you had to adhere to a routine of wait and see and look at calendar as days went by. Maybe you were an employee at a micro, medium or small enterprise, and able to support yourself and your family with your eyes constantly on receiving timely payment for your services, and here you came to know that you would not have to go to work and would receive little or no payment. Maybe your vehicles were well on the run being in transportation business with frequent accelerated boom and sometime with concerns of fluctuation of fuel prices, all of sudden, you had to keep your vehicles off the roads and shift to watching the news on how the situation would unfold.

This is how is everyone’s story of coming across COVID19, which started effecting lives from the last days of 2019 with visible impacts in our country from February 2020 onward.    The unpredictability, so characteristic to the commencement of the pandemic, is still holds true as no exit is in sight. The pandemic hit everyone equally in our unequal world, and the later being so prominent, those victims of the prevalent inequality, came under hard hit as their misfortunes got multiplied. In this discussion, we will try to explore how the pandemic has affected various sections of the society in Gilgit-Baltistan with particular reference to their professions and employment.  

Without much help from data partly because of difficulty in availability and accessibility of data, and depending on our experience and intuition, we can infer that largest segment of the population in Gilgit-Baltistan is working in agriculture sector. Agriculture for most of the people has not only been a profession but also a way of life, where men and women; irrespective of being skilled or unskilled, young or old, are engaged. Those engaged with agriculture do a variety of activities including cultivating farm lands, managing livestock, taking care of seasonal fruits, allocating fruits for domestic use and selling the surplus either in raw or processed form. Second in the list of the employment is, the number of people working in public sector including Pak Army, and federal and provincial departments. Micro, medium and small enterprises (also including service providers and suppliers) absorb large number  of people stretched from urban to rural areas, which might be the third largest source of employment. In addition, private sector organizations and institutions including NGOs, INGOs, and civil society organizations provide employment to a large number of people. Traders makes a relatively small number of people, who carry out their trade inter districts, with down cities of the country and small-scale import and export work. Labor is another category, which partially remains part of agriculture and in part with their labor work, which includes both skilled and unskilled work. Digital and online employment is getting popular with educated youth; however, it is yet to touch a sizable number. 

How each of these sectors have been affected by COVID19? Obviously, each of the sectors operate differently in a given environment, and therefore, the way they have been affected is different from each other. In Gilgit-Baltistan, as mentioned earlier, the agrarian sector absorbs the largest number of people.  Agriculture production is seasonal, while availability of finance is needed for all the time for purchasing of everyday consumables, fodder for livestock, agriculture inputs, expenditures on social, religious and culture events including those of births, marriages and deaths, and expenses related to education and health. The households have their mechanism of access to finance. The household mostly consists of joint family system, which also work as a great social support mechanism. In the joint family, in addition to agriculture, household members associate themselves in a variety of employment options including employment in public or private sector, running some sort of business ranging from micro, small to medium enterprise. This in return, works as a coordinated effort, where those earning money on regular basis either from job or business contribute to the cash requirements within the household. Obviously, not the all the households have the similar combination of family members and similar distribution of professions. Overall, due to the inherent nature of interconnectedness agriculture and other professions, this sector has experienced relatively mild hardship in face of the pandemic.

Hardship has also been less for those employed in public sector organizations, and those working with financially sound private organizations including NGOs, INGOs and CBOs. The employees of these organizations continued to receive their monthly salaries. According to some people, it once again proved their perception as not unfounded that employment in public sector is safe and secure. The number of those working in private sector organizations is much smaller than those in public sector, however, they faced varied situations. Organizations with ongoing program and operations’ budget and endowment, could continue providing their employees with salaries, and so do those who charge for their services. Those with constraints on the part of financial resources, had to shift the burden to their employees as well.  As for the self-employed; to start with those with well established businesses, the effects of the pandemic might not have proved so severe due to their resiliency to shocks, revenues on capital and differed investments, and capacity to availing the packages announced by the government such as Rozgar Schemes and others. The poorest segment of the society and daily wagers, who were registered for social safety net, received much needed money and if they continue to receive that on regular basis, they will be less likely to be hit hard. The poor segment of the society has also been provided with some support from NGOs and philanthropist, in addition to the public safety nets, and therefore, the situation will be far less than deteriorating consequences for them.

It is obvious that the measures taken and mechanism adapted for ameliorating and mitigating the effects of pandemic needed to be in keeping with the needs of the people. One response fit for all was not workable, therefore, responses tailored to needs were what could have countered the effects. For this purpose, government came up with various responses and so did private sector, national and international organizations, and civil society institutions.  Some of the measures in public sector included emergency cash for program for poor, distribution of essential items, deferred payment of loans and utilities, package for retaining employees, tax reliefs, stimulus package for various sectors and services, online classes for students and decision on incremental marking instead of examinations. Private sector financial institutions also played their important role in facilitating the services announced by government, and also facilitated their client’s whatever way they could have done. Similarly, financial institutions within the communities in Gilgit-Baltistan including cooperative societies, saving groups and community organizations also came up to the occasion by giving relief packages as well as giving access to finance at this crucial juncture.  There measures helped in reducing the impacts of the pandemic, however, there is need of looking into facilitating those hit hard by the pandemic, who remained out of site for the most part. In terms of having no tailored need based support, it appears that those who suffered the most are micro and small enterprises (of all categories), service providers (including but not limited to hoteliers, technicians, consultants, media persons, lawyers, tourist guides and skilled labor and so on), suppliers (of various categories). Secondly, the youth, who have been actively pursuing to hunt employment but are at halt due to the pandemic, also it includes the youth who have to temperately or permanently transit to rural areas from cities. A number of young people had to come from abroad owing to the situation either unpaid for their services abroad or being out of job for longer time, they are also among those needing support. As the Gilgit-Baltistan budget 2020 has been very much budget as usual without much consideration for addressing the issues emerged as a result of the pandemic, therefore, the interim government need to work with federal government to get support and workout a comprehensive package for those hit hard.

Based on the magnitude of the pandemic, which is unpredictable yet, and how worse, moderate or light the people have been hit, and more so based on their professions, will be important as decision-making factor in choosing futuristic course of professional path and employment. More probably, this will not only confine to the choice of professions and employment but also encompass choices such as location - whether urban or rural, sectors – whether public or private, type of employment- self-employed or otherwise, risk taking or avoiding – investment or savings, area of engagement- production, service provisions,  channels – whether physical presence or online, and more possible alternatives based on experiences, preferences and perceived possibility of success in post Covid time. Physical remoteness of GB from the rest of the country has had consequences for the people in many ways already, now in an age of interconnectivity through internet, the remoteness still persists due to issues related to internet connectivity. Students, researchers, businesses, online workers and all those whose work mostly depends on internet, are bearing additional burden of stress and uncertainty.   

Amid the pandemic, that too at an earlier stage, this could have looked awkward to talk about opportunities, however, as time goes by, opportunities are being talked about as they are unfolding themselves in various forms during the pandemic as well in post pandemic prospective. In 2005, when the deadly earthquake struck some part of the country and wrought havoc on large scale with huge loss of lives, looking for any opportunities at beginning might have been a possibility far away. While dealing with the catastrophe, evolved the opportunities and with normalization of the situation those were translated into advantage of the people. Two of the very good public sector organizations; Earthquake Rehabilitation Authority (ERA) and National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) came into being in the aftermath of the disaster, which are now at the frontline in each of the disasters and in current pandemic. The locations devastated by the disaster, came across opportunity of having good infrastructure including housing, roads, hospitals, schools and also access to health and education facilities and better connection with rest of the world. COVID19 is also seen to have many opportunities, which will make their way as new normal. Online classes for the students are one of the examples, although GB has not been very lucky as it remains offline most of the time, which can revolutionize the entire education system. Opportunities are also foreseen in form of greater cooperation among countries and nations, new avenues of research and technology, collaboration for conflicts resolution, greater awareness on health and hygiene, action for reducing inequalities, expediting climate action, and collaboration for collective safety and security. During experiencing the effects of COVID19 while in lockdown, people have reflected on many aspects of their lives and the matters affecting them. These reflections, contemplations, observations, retrospectives thinking and prospective outlook have drawn many lessons leant, which are being shared on various platforms including social media. One of the important lessons learnt is that it not the cost of living which is expensive, rather it is the cost of life style which is expensive, and once you are more concerned about living rather than life style, life becomes much easier and economical. 

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