Already outsourcing to Pakistan had dried up due to the security concerns, load-shedding, and red-tapes involved in bureaucracy. And now this Axact scandal of selling fake degrees in the garb of an IT firm has darkened the atmosphere to a very high gloomy level. Worried Pakistani IT industry after Axact episode is glum. Pakistani professionals are fearing for a mass loss of jobs in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad; the three cities which are the hubs of IT jobs in all the pertinent fields. Still lots of small to medium size software houses operate in these cities with limited budget, working day in and day out, to provide services to the offshore clients.
One of my friend who works in a OCR related IT firm which gets work from UK and USA has told me that their clients have asked the local firm to provide authentic and vetted degrees of all the people working here. If they fail to satisfy the foreign clients they risk losing all the business and hence the jobs. The implications are very grave, far reaching and long lasting. One silver lining is that the federal government has taken a prompt notice of Axact scam. FBR, FIA, and other agencies have raided the premises, confiscated the evidence, and have arrested many people involved including the head honcho Shoaib Shaikh. It’s also good that Pakistani officials are keeping it all transparent and coordinating with the foreign agencies like FBI and Interpol. Pakistan needs to show that they are serious about it and won’t tolerate such scams originating from their soil. Pakistani IT heads should sit with the IT ministry and chalk out a media campaign in foreign news outlets like CNN, BBC, NYT, FT, Economist etc to let world know what we are doing to unearth this scam and what will we do it ensure that such thing doesn’t happen again.