KARACHI, Nov 19: Hinting that the British government was planning to train Pakistani police to address law and order here, a diplomat said on Monday he hoped the situation in Karachi would ultimately gain lasting peace.

“Karachi today is not that different from Belfast in Northern Ireland of 20 years ago. It is not that any situation that is bad will remain the same. We believe that your city, too, can change like ours did,” said British deputy high commissioner Francis Campbell while speaking to Dawn on the sidelines of the launch of the London School of Business and Finance (LSBF) career development programme in Pakistan here on Monday.

“That is also why recently we took a group of your ministers, including Sindh Senior Minister for Education and Literacy Pir Mazhar-ul-Haq, to experience our model, Belfast, to see for themselves how a society can change by introducing them to our institutions in the UK and how they work.

There are also plans to offer training opportunities to your police force so that you can tackle the law and order situation here with our best practices,” he added.

“And with so many Pakistani students having studied or studying at British educational institutions in the UK, we have developed very good cultural ties with your country. Now we need to translate those cultural ties into business ties,” he said coming to the main subject of the evening’s programme.

“There are so many British brands such as Debenhams, Next, Mothercare, etc, opening up here now which can capitalise on the human resource being produced at the educational institutions in the UK,” he pointed out.

“The one key issue that has the potential to transform Pakistan’s future is education. The UK government is strongly committed to partnering in that transformation with Pakistan. Introducing UK qualifications here will not only contribute to the betterment of Pakistan’s future but also strengthen the bilateral relations between our two countries,” he said.

Meanwhile, LSBF’s Country Head for Pakistan, Faisal Azeem, while introducing their career development programme said that it provided skills that would prepare Pakistan’s new generation for the job market. “Our ‘360 degree’ consists of three parts, including a degree, a professional qualification and an exclusive LSBF career development programme. These are simultaneous over a period of three years. And with that comes at least three guaranteed foreign job offers after graduation,” he said.

Asked if offering foreign jobs to newly graduating Pakistani students would contribute to the brain drain here, he said they were really trying to tap into the country’s potential by giving the students a chance to meet the demands of global standards of excellence in business and expose them to bigger opportunities to bring that expertise and skill to their country, where many multi-national companies were opening up now. “With such kind of a foreign-qualified work force already available, there will be more such big businesses opening up branches here to capitalise on the expertise,” he said.

“We have regional offices in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore. Though our first intake for the course will be in 2013, we have already recruited some 28 students from Pakistan. We have exceptional faculty at our campuses in the UK, Canada and Singapore and we are speaking to educational bodies here to open up a campus here in collaboration with them.”