Freelancing has become one of the biggest industries for earning and generating money. You only need to have few analytical skills, good know-how of English, and a laptop with Wifi connection and that’s it. Pakistanis are well-aware of the online industry today. According to the eRozgar website, Pakistan is considered to be amongst the top five countries, ranked fourth in the Online Labor Index published in 2017 by Oxford Internet Institute, where people earn approximately $0.5 billion from freelancing. Similarly, the average salary of a freelancer is Rs. 28,909 per month in Pakistan. This means that Pakistan has the potential to compete with the world’s biggest markets such as the US which according to the Global Gig-Economy Index, generated 78% of freelancer earnings through gig economy in 2019, followed by U.K (59%), and Brazil (47%). While Pakistan stood fourth with 47% of the increase in its freelancer revenues in the previous year and stood among the top 10 countries of Asia that enjoyed generating money through the online industry. However, from the very beginning of the year 2020, the world has experienced major economic crises due to COVID-19. Even, the biggest economies of the world such as the US, the U.K, Italy, Spain, and France have encountered havoc due to this pandemic. Despite taking all the possible measures from increasing medical staff to complete lockdown in the country, they have been unable to overcome this catastrophe. Then how could a developing country like Pakistan be expected to control the coronavirus cases which has its 40% population living below the poverty line. Certainly, the current lockdown situation in our country is creating panic and distress in nearly the people of all ages. The mainstream and social media are thoroughly engulfed with the news of increasing coronavirus cases and the number of casualties daily. This created anxiety, suffering, and perturbation among the youth. Schools, colleges, and universities are closed which has limited the students to stick to their homes. Many institutes came up with the idea of arranging online classes using online media forums which have badly failed in our country. Teachers and students are not satisfied with the unplanned mechanism that is adopted for online classes. As a result, most of the institutes canceled the online classes and thus looking forward to June for resuming the semesters. In current circumstances, the youth of Pakistan seems to be directionless, completely bored with having no physical and mental activity. I have heard many students complaining about their monotonous and dull sort of routine. They seem to be perturbed for not having interesting and thought-provoking activities nowadays. Those who are interested in working as freelancers find no direction of where to start. Especially, the ones having social and technical writing skills find no reliable site where they could articulate their talent. Because, where there are many benefits of online earning, certain cases of frauds have also been reported by the writers who work with full honesty and dedication but fall victim to fraudsters. […]
